I 


PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 


PROBLEMS  OF  THE 
ACTOR 

BY         Ti.-t'^^^ 

LOUIS  CALVERT 

91 

WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION 

BY 

CLAYTON  HAMILTON 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY    HOLT    AND   COMPANY 

1918 


*^(i  ^3"^  t 


Copyright,  1918, 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
Published  April,  1918 


TMt  QUINN  &  BODEN  CO.  PRESS 
RAHWAY,  N.  J. 


P/V"- 


PROLOGUE 

I  HAVE  been  on  the  stage  for  more  than 
forty  years.  My  profession  and  its 
problems  have  been  the  principal  inter- 
est in  my  life.  It  is  natural  that  such  an 
extended  association  with  the  theater  should 
yield  certain  technical  theories  on  my  art; 
and,  since  I  am  nearing  sixty,  it  is  natural 
that  I  should  want  to  talk  about  them.  I 
do  not  regard  any  opinion  I  hold  on  the 
subject  of  acting  as  infallible;  I  learn  some- 
thing new  about  my  profession  every  day; 
but  there  is  one  claim  I  make  for  the  opinions 
I  state  in  this  book:  they  are  not  hasty. 
They  have  been  two  score  years  in  taking 
shape. 

I  have  watched  many  young  people  start 
their  careers  on  the  stage;  I  have  seen  some 
of  them  rise  to  success,  and  others  sink  to 
oblivion.  It  has  seemed  to  me  that  the  diffi- 
culties each  met,  and  the  mistakes  each  was 

V 

442299 


vi  PROLOGUE 

likely  to  make  were,  in  a  general  way,  always 
of  the  same  character.  They  were  the  diffi- 
culties and  mistakes  which  all  actors  en- 
counter. 

In  my  own  early  days  I  remember  I  used  to 
wonder  why  it  was  not  possible  to  guide  my- 
self somewhat  by  the  experiences  of  others,  as 
I  could  have  done  in  almost  any  other  profes- 
sion. I  knew  there  was  little  doubt  that 
others  had  passed  through  the  same  trials 
that  I  was  passing  through.  Why  had  they 
not  left  the  story  of  their  experiences  to  be 
a  guide  for  me?  Why  were  there  no  tradi- 
tions, no  standards  in  my  art,  as  there  were 
in  every  other  art?  Why  did  I,  and  every 
other  novice,  have  to  begin  in  the  dark  and 
carve  out  our  own  standards  and  traditions? 
It  seemed  to  me  then,  and  seems  to  me  now, 
a  great  misfortune  that  there  is  no  body  of 
literature  on  the  actor's  art  to  which  the 
novice  might  go  for  guidance.  I  do  not 
mean  text-books  on  "elocution"  (Heaven 
forbid!) ;  I  mean  books  of  opinion,  books  of 
experience  which  might  embody  the  enduring. 


PROLOGUE  vii 

time-tested  traditions  of  our  art.  But  there 
is  no  such  body  of  hterature;  it  has  been 
truly  said  that  the  art  of  the  actor  dies  with 
hiiTi.  That  is  a  great  pity.  Surely  there  are 
some  truths  which  he  could  bequeath  to  pos- 
terity. 

There  is  no  lack  of  books  dealing  with  the 
lives  of  those  in  the  actor's  profession.  But 
few  of  them  shed  any  light  on  the  technique 
by  which  the  admired  actors  of  the  past  rose 
to  high  place.  They  are  mostly  pleasant, 
chatty  reminiscences  of  their  personal  lives, 
whereas  it  is  their  professional  lives  that 
are  significant.  We  know  a  great  deal  of 
Edwin  Booth,  for  instance,  as  a  popular  idol 
feted  and  revered  by  those  in  and  out  of 
the  profession;  but  we  know  very  little  of 
Edwin  Booth,  the  obscure,  struggling  youth 
he  must  have  been  in  the  beginning.  The 
story  and  reasons  for  his  unsung  triumphs  in 
those  lean  years  preceding  his  success  would 
be  of  infinitely  more  value  to  the  profession 
he  loved  so  heartily  than  the  glowing  ac- 
counts  of  his   later  triumphs.      The   young 


viii  PROLOGUE 

actor  is  not  concerned  so  much  with  the 
dizzy  heights  his  predecessors  reached  as  he 
is  in  how  they  went  about  it  to  scale  the 
heights.  It  may  be  that  the  giants  of  the 
past  each  reached  the  goal  by  a  different  road, 
but  surely  it  would  be  of  advantage  to  the 
beginner  if  he  could  have  some  knowledge 
of  each  one. 

However,  in  this  little  study,  I  have  not 
attempted  an  autobiographical  account  of  my 
early  struggles  in  the  profession,  nor  a  story 
of  my  experiences  on  the  stage ;  I  have  rather 
tried  to  derive  from  my  experiences  some 
truths  which  might  be  of  service  to  the  be- 
ginning actor,  to  state  as  concretely  as  pos- 
sible some  of  the  simple  principles  which 
bitter  experience  has  made  me  believe  are 
sound. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  do  not  wish  to  be 
suspected  of  formulating  a  technique  of  act- 
ing. I  should  not  attempt  anything  so  pre- 
sumptuous. I  am  sure  I  know  too  much 
about  the  stage  for  that. 

With  regard  to  actual  method,  what  is  one 


PROLOGUE  ix 

man's  meat  is  another's  poison.  In  the  de- 
tails of  his  work,  each  actor  must  work  out 
his  own  salvation  to  a  very  great  extent;  he 
must  find  his  own  technique,  in  a  sense,  since 
it  is  the  individual  quality  he  is  able  to  give 
his  work  that  must  raise  him  above  his  fel- 
lows. My  sole  purpose  in  this  book,  then, 
is  to  assist  the  beginner  in  finding  his  own 
technique. 

In  the  light  of  my  own  career  I  have  en- 
deavored to  inquire  into  some  of  the  broad, 
general  laws  which  are  constant  in  this  ever- 
changing  craft  of  ours,  and  which  must  un- 
derlie all  effective  work  on  the  stage.  There 
are  certainly  in  this  craft,  as  in  any  other, 
some  simple  essentials  which  every  beginner 
should  know  at  the  start,  and  which  he  can 
learn  from  others.  I  thoroughly  believe  that 
much  depends  upon  the  approach  the  young 
actor  makes  to  his  work,  the  attitude  he  takes 
toward  his  profession,  the  aims  he  strives 
for.  It  would  seem  that  an  analysis  of 
some  of  the  old-timer's  experiences  and 
opinions   might   be   helpful   and   stimulating 


X  PROLOGUE 

in    starting    the    novice    along    the    proper 
road. 

It  is  my  firm  belief  that  there  are  two 
virtues  to  strive  for;  Simplicity  and  Truth. 
I  believe  that  as  one  grows  in  knowledge  of 
his  craft,  it  becomes  more  and  more  difficult 
to  retain  these  blessed  qualities.  The  great' 
effort  should  be  to  remain  simple,  to  acquire  a 
more  intelligent  and  effective  simplicity,  as 
we  progress;  for  the  more  we  learn  of  the  in- 
tricacies and  subtleties  of  our  craft,  the  more 
likely  we  are  to  depart  from  the  solid  pri- 
maries which  must  be  the  foundation  of  all 
enduring  work. 

This  belief  I  have  tried  to  justify  and  ex- 
plain in  the  pages  that  follow;  and  I  have 
tried  to  make  clear  what  seem  to  me  to  be 
the  primaries  from  which  we  should  never 
depart. 

In  conclusion  I  wish  to  express  my  very 
hearty  appreciation  of  the  assistance  given 
me  by  my  young  friend,  Mr.  Kenneth  An- 
drews, both  in  valuable  suggestions  as  to 
arrangement    and    other    matters.      Without 


PROLOGUE  xi 

his  constant  encouragement  and  help,  I  doubt 
if  I  could  have  stuck  to  this  book  until  I 
had  finished  it,  for  I  am  a  man  of  action, 
not  of  words,  and  writing  is  new  to  me.  I 
wanted  to  put  Mr.  Andrews'  name  along  with 
mine  on  the  title  page,  but  he  was  too  modest, 
and  would  not  let  me. 

Louis  Calvert. 
New  York, 

December,  1917. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Prologue v 

IxTRODucTiox.     By  Clayton  Hamilton     .       .       .     xvii 

CHAPTER 

I.    "I  Know  I  Have  It  in  Me  ! " 3 

Art  Must  Be  an  Absolute  Mistress — Selling  Our 
Lives  for  a  Price — Charlotte  Cushman's  Creed — Why 
Do  I  Want  to  Be  an  Actor? — Indispensable  Qualifica- 
tions: Enthusiasm,  "Humanity,"  Imagination,  Voice, 
Personal  Appearance. 

II.    Entering  the  Profession 19 

Competition  in  Actor's  Profession  No  Keener  than 
in  Any  Other— "  Pull "  of  Little  Value— The  Road 
Company — The  Evils  of  Endless  Repetition — Stay- 
ing on  Broadway — How  One-part  Actors  Are  Devel- 
oped— Actor  and  Manager  Both  Harmed  by  "Type" 
Casting — The  Stock  Company — The  Varied  Experi- 
ence It  Provides — The  Repertoire — No  Star,  No 
Squirrel-in-a-Cage  Routine,  Team-work. 

III.  The  Voice — the  Instrument  We  Play  ...       43 

Seeming  to  Speak  Naturally — The  Handicap  of  a 
Half-trained  Voice — Our  Voice:  Our  Point  of  Con- 
tact with  Our  Public— The  Dread  of  "Elocution"— 
The  Art  of  Concealing  Art — Harry  Lauder's  Re- 
markable Voice — Charles  Kean's  Stage  Voice — The 
Power  of  Tones — Saving  the  Voice — The  Two  Pri- 
mary Tones — Distinct  Utterance  a  Simple  Achieve- 
ment— Laughing  Infectiously — Taste  in  Using  One's 
Technical  Skill. 

IV.  Getting  Inside  One's  Part  .....       61 

Learning  Words  Before  We  Know  Their  Meaning 
— Study  the  Character  for  Light  on  the  Words,  Not 
the  Words  for  Light  on  the  Character — We  Should 
Know  Our  Part's  Relation  to  the  Whole— The  Es- 
sence of  Illusory  Impersonation — Dissolving  Shylock 
into  His  Component  Parts — How  An}-  Character  Can 


xiv  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Be  Made  to  Reveal  Itself  from  a  Study  of  the 
Lines— The  Second  Step:  Becoming  a  Shy  lock— The 
Third  Step:  Thinking  out  Shylock  in  Wall  Street 
Terms— The  Last  Step:  Associating  Our  New  Self 
with  the  Play  as  a  Whole— This  Formula  Applies  to 
Plays  Modern  and  Classical. 

V.   The  Eye  and  the  Hands 79 

"Five-finger  Exercises"  Necessary  for  the  Actor, 
Too — Revealing  the  Unexpressed  Emotions — Irving  as 
Becket— "  One- Thing  at  a  Time  "—Doing  Just  Enough 
— Coquelin's  Peculiar  Mannerism — When  in  Doubt  Do 
Nothing— The  Set  Gestures  of  the  Good  Old  Days— 
An  Example  of  Splendid  Repose — Saving  Bits  of 
Business  for  Future  Use — Gestures  Grow  from  Char- 
acter, Not  from  Lines — Heroic  Gestures  for  Heroic 
Plays — Never  Let  Them  See  too  Much. 

VI.    The  Art  of  Doing  Nothing 96 

One  Actor  Cannot  Stand  Alone — Supplementing  the 
Speeches  of  Others — Sweet  Nell  of  Old  Drury  and 
The  Lady  of  Lyons — Team-work  Will  Cover  a  Mul- 
titude of  Sins — Pinero's  Advice — Coaxing  the  Audi- 
ence to  Listen — Listening  Through  Long  Speeches — 
Know  What  You  Are  Going  to  Do  When  Silent — 
Varying  Our  Reading — Miming  Must  Grow  from 
the  Character — Retaining  the  Illusion  of  the  First 
Time— The  Point,  Thrust,  and  Lunge— Thinking  Lines 
—Giving  the  Audience  a  Rest— Little  Things  All 
Count. 

VII.    The  Emotions 121 

All  Acting  Is  Emotional,  and  All  Actors  Must  Be 
Capable  of  Projecting  the  Primary  Emotions — Trick- 
ing an  Audience — Sir  Herbert  Tree's  Finesse — In 
Called  Back — His  Artifice  in  Trilby — In  Jim  the 
Penman — His  Wolsey's  Falseness — We  Must  Draw 
Our  Interpretation  Solely  from  the  Author's  Lines- 
Tree's  Shylock  Saved  by  a  Trick — Coquelin's  Cyrano 
Merely  Make-believe — Ristori's  Comment  on  Rachel 
— Should  We  Literally  Feel  the  Emotions  We  Por- 
tray?— Irving's  Opinion,  and  Ellen  Terry's — Guiding 
Oneself  Through  the  Impassioned  Speech — Crescendo 
of  Emotion — Beginning  Gently — Nervousness  Often 
a  Good  Thing— Othello's  Emotion— The  "After- 
swell" — Ignoring  the  Audience. 


CONTENTS  XV 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VIII.    Making  an   Audience  Laugh 152 

Audience  Must  Be  Taken  into  Partnership  in 
Comedy — The  Comedian  Must  Sense  His  Audience — 
Allowing  for  the  Laugh — Letting  the  Audience  Have 
Its  Head;  Major  Barbara — Making  Them  Save  up 
Their  Laughter — There  Can  Be  Too  Much  Laughter 
in  a  Play — Shaw's  Request — Remaining  Unconscious 
of  Our  Own  Humor — To  Be  Infectious  Any  Emotion 
Must  Come  from  the  Inside,  Not  from  the  Lines 
Alone. 


IX.  "  Futures  "  and  the  Paradox  of  the  Amateur  .  161 
Brilliant  Promise  of  the  Beginner  Often  Unful- 
filled— Lawrence  Irving's  Grotesque  Early  Work — 
Henry  Irving:  a  Prophet  Without  Honor  in  Man- 
chester— Barry  Sullivan's  Disastrous  Conservatism — 
The  Dangerous  Transitional  Stage  Between  the 
Amateur  and  the  Professional — The  "  Sufficiently 
Unprofessional "  Wisconsin  Players — Acting  is  Danc- 
ing in  Shackles — Exchanging  Intuition  for  Tech- 
nique— The  Moffat  Company  and  Bunty  Pulls  the 
Strings — Studied  Simplicity  and  Acquired  Natural- 
Bess. 


K 


X.    The  Effect  of  Realistic  Scenery  and  Lighting 

ON  the  Actor 176 

Work  of  the  Actor  Inextricably  Interwoven  with 
That  of  the  Producer,  Scenic  Artist,  and  Others — 
Scenery  Should  Suggest  not  Copy  Life,  Should 
Stimulate  not  Overfeed  or  Starve  the  Imagination — 
The  Ironworks  in  Galsworthy's  Strife,  "  Real "  and 
Suggested — Granville  Barker's  Setting  for  Androcles 
and  the  Lion:  Proudly  Crude  and  Frankly  Primitive 
— The  Primary  Purpose  of  All  Scenery — Wlien  the 
Imaginative  Artist,  the  Interior  Decorator,  and  the 
Landscape  Gardener  Clash — The  Mechanical  Ship 
That  Would  Not  Wreck  and  the  Simpler  Substitute — 
How  Actors  Are  Often  Swamped  by  Scenery — The 
Need  of  Co-ordination — The  Terrors  of  Strange  Fur- 
niture— Many  Plays  Ruined  by  Lack  of  Method — 
Lighting  Which  Blurs  or  Silhouettes  the  Faces  of 
the  Actors — Natural  Lighting — Distracting  Lights — 
Moonlight — Seeking  the  Impression  of  Reality,  Not 
Reality  Itself. 


xvi  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XI.  Music  and  Costumes  versus  the  Actor  .  .  .  213 
The  Work  of  Each  Specialist  Should  Be  Blended 
into  a  Coherent  Whole — The  Function  of  Costume — 
Allowing  for  the  Distraction  of  Striking  Costumes — 
The  Play  Must  Be  Always  Supreme — Irving's  Clash 
with  His  Orchestra  Leader — The  Voice  of  the  Actor 
the  Melody  of  the  Piece,  All  Else  the  Accompaniment. 

XII.  The  "Tone"  of  a  Performance  .  .  .  .225 
Where  the  Real  Charm  of  a  Charming  Play  Lies 
— The  Eleventh-hour  Rescue  of  Kismet — Keeping 
One's  Comedy  in  Key — AVarfield's  Rage  in  The 
Music  Master — Tad  Mortimer's  Rebellion  in  The 
Thunderbolt — Wrong  Emphasis  Fatal  for  Othello 
and  Many  of  Shakespeare's  Plays — How  The  Con- 
cert Was  Ruined  in  London — How  to  Insure  Har- 
mony of  Tone — Actors  Are  Not  Mechanics — Keeping 
Close  to  the  Primaries. 

XIII.  Traditions 243 

"  Lest  We  Forget  "—The  "  Old-fashioned  "  Methods 

of  Ten  or  Twenty  Years  Ago — Methods  Change,  but 
Art  Is  Constant — No  Temple  for  the  Precious  Lore 
of  the  Actor's  Art — There  Must  Have  Been  Great  Ac- 
tors to  Perform  the  Great  Plays  of  the  Past — The 
Strong  Appeal  of  the  Old  Method — Expressing  Emo- 
tion and  Repressing  Emotion — Gordon  Craig,  the 
Passionate   Dilettante — "  Unattached  "    Cleverness. 

XIV.  The  Art  of  Acting       •. 257 

Is   Acting   a   Dependent,   Imitative  Art,   or   Is   It 

Creative? — Two  Insignificant  Plays,  Rip  Van  Winkle 
and  The  Music  Master,  Which  Actors  Made  Enor- 
mous Successes — The  Folly  of  Comparing  the  Art  of 
the  Actor  with  That  of  the  Poet  or  Painter — When 
a  Play  Is  a  Play — Why  the  Actor's  Work  Is  Creative 
and  Not  Imitative — The  Place  of  the  Actor's  Art. 


INTRODUCTION 

TO  quote  that  phrase  so  dear  to  after- 
dinner   speakers, — Mr.    Louis    Calvert 
"  needs  no  introduction "  as  an  artist 
of  the  theater;  but  there  is,  at  least,  a  novel 
pleasure  in  announcing  his  first  appearance 
as  an  author. 

Any  treatise  on  the  art  of  acting  de- 
pends for  its  importance  on  the  experience, 
and  consequent  authority,  of  the  man  who 
has  prepared  it.  No  other  art,  in  its  meth- 
ods of  employing  means  to  the  achievement 
of  an  end,  is  so  little  understood  by  non- 
practitioners..  The  laws  of  play-making  have 
been  codified  most  clearly  by  critics  who  have 
never  written  plays, — like  Aristotle,  for  ex- 
ample, or — to  cite  a  modern  instance — Mr. 
William  Archer.  The  most  serviceable  text- 
books of  harmony  and  counterpoint  have  been 
written,  not  by  great  musicians  or  composers, 
but  by  humbler  music-teachers.  The  ablest 
explanations  of  the  technical  devices  em- 
ployed in  painting,  in  sculpture,  and  in  archi- 

xvii 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

tecture  have  been  made  by  men  of  letters, 
whose  actual  practice  of  the  art  which  formed 
the  subject  of  their  study  has  been  merely 
incidental.  But  acting  is  the  one  art  whose 
fundamental  principles  are  rarely,  if  ever, 
appreciated  by  the  layman. 

It  is  not  unfair  to  state  that  no  "  dramatic 
critic"  of  the  present  time  (and  the  writer 
of  this  sentence  is  one  among  the  many) 
knows  anything  at  all  about  the  craftsman- 
ship of  acting.  "  Dramatic  critics  "  are  often 
able  to  elucidate  the  problems  of  the  play- 
wright. Whether  or  not  they  happen  to  have 
written  plays,  they  are,  at  least,  accustomed 
to  the  processes  of  authorship:  they  can  tell 
a  good  play  from  a  bad  play,  and  can  ex- 
plain to  the  public  the  reason  why  one  play 
is  worthy  of  consideration  and  another  worthy 
only  of  contempt.  But,  when  it  comes  to 
"  criticising "  actors,  they  can  merely  state 
that  they  liked  one  performer  and  did  not 
like  another,  and  cannot — in  either  case — ex- 
plain the  reason  why. 

In  my  entire  association  with  the  theater — 
which  stretches  back  over  a  period  of  fifteen 
years — I  have  never  met  a  man,  however 
cultured,  whose  opinions  on  the  art  of  acting 


^. 


INTRODUCTION  xlx 


ere  of  any  value,  unless  he  was  himself  an 
actor,  a  stage-director,  or  a  playwright;  and, 
,  from  conversations  with  my  elders,  I  have 
'  gathered  evidence  of  only  two  laymen  in  the 
^Enghsh-speaking  world  whose  appreciation 
of  this  art  could  be  regarded  as  authoritative. 
One  of  these  was  George  Henry  Lewes,  whose 
treatise  On  Actors  and  the  Art  of  Acting — 
originally  published  in  the  early  eighteen- 
seventies — is  still  accepted  as  a  standard  work, 
because  no  subsequent  "  dramatic  critic  "  has 
been  able  to  transcend  and  supersede  it.  The 
other  was  Professor  Fleeming  Jenkin, — the 
friend  and  teacher  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
at  the  University  of  Edinburgh;  but  Jenkin 
was  noted  as  an  amateur  actor,  and  perhaps, 
on  this  account,  cannot  rightly  be  regarded 
^  a  non-practitioner. 

*^n  consequence  of  this  condition,  a  discus- 
,m)n  of  the  problems  of  the  actor — to  be  at 
all  authoritative — must  be  written  by  an 
actor,  and  not  by  a  man  of  letters, — not 
even  by  that  special  type  of  literary  crafts- 
man that  is  generally  known  as  a  "  dramatic 
critic."  But  the  unfortunate  fact  remains, 
and  must  frankly  be  admitted,  that  most 
I  actors  cannot  write.     This  is,  of  course,  the 


XX  INTRODUCTION 

reason  why  the  art  of  acting  has  been  beg- 
gared, in  nearly  every  period,  of  adequate 
description.  The  men  who  really  understood 
the  fundamentals  of  the  craft  were  tongue- 
tied,  and  could  not  express  themselves  in 
print.  The  little  that  I  know  about  the  art 
of  stage-projection — and  I  mention  this  detail 
because  it  typifies  the  experience  of  many 
other  writers — has  been  taught  me  in  the 
storm  and  stress  of  actual  rehearsals  under 
the  direction  of  such  actors  as  Henry  Miller, 
Richard  Mansfield,  and  George  M.  Cohan; 
yet  I  doubt  if  any  of  these  admitted  artists 
of  the  theater  could  have  summoned  either 
time  or  inclination  or  ability  to  impart  to  the 
reading  public,  through  the  medium  of  print, 
the  lessons  they  have  handed  down,  by  word 
of  mouth,  to  many  authors  like  myself.  The 
art  of  acting  can  be  taught  only  by  an  actor; 
but  very  few  actors  have  been  able,  or  even 
willing,  to  convey  their  knowledge  of  the  art 
beyond  the  barrier  of  the  footlights. 

The  author  of  the  present  treatise  has  been 
prominent  before  the  eyes  of  the  theater- 
going public  of  America  since  1909,  when 
he  was  invited  overseas  to  serve  as  classical 
producer  and  one  of  the  leading  actors  of  the 


1 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

New  Theater,  in  New  York, — that  interesting 
institution  which  failed  only  because  the 
monumental  edifice  which  housed  it  more 
nearly  resembled  a  mausoleum  than  a  mod- 
ern playhouse.  At  the  New  Theater,  from 
1909  to  1911,  Mr.  Calvert  appeared — as  faith- 
ful theater-goers  will  remember — in  the  fol- 
lowing parts:  The  Grand  Duke  in  The  Cot-,, 
tage  in  the  Air,  John  Anthony  in  ^trjfe^^r 
Peter  Teazle  in  The  School  for  l^candal,  Al- 
fred Thompsett  in  Don;  Sir_Taby  Belch  in 
Twelfth  Night,  Falstaff  in  The  Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor,  James  Mortimore  in  The  Thun- 
derbolt, Dr.  Jiittner  in  Old  Heidelberg,  and 
Sir  Pitt  Crawley  in  Vanity  Fair, 

After  the  collapse  of  the  New  Theater,  Mr. 
Calvert  went  back  to  London.  In  June, 
1911,  he  apx)eared  at  the  Savoy  Theater  as 
Major  Bagstock  in  Dornbey  and  Son;  on  June 
27,  he  impersonated  Simon  Ingot  in  a  gala 
performance  of  David  Garrick  at  His  Maj- 
esty's Theater;  in  September  of  the  same 
year,  he  played  Mercutio  in  Fred  Terry's 
production  of  Romeo  and  Juliet;  and,  in 
November,  he  appeared  as  Micawber  in  Wil- 
kins  Micawber.  In  the  autumn  of  1915,  Mr. 
Calvert  returned  to  New  York,  to  appear, 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

first  of  all,  in  a  play  of  brief  duration  called 
The  Bargain,  Shortly  afterward,  he  became 
associated  with  Grace  George  in  her  am- 
bitious and  apparently  successful  season  of 
repertory  at  The  Playhouse.  In  the  spring 
of  1916,  Mr.  Calvert  contributed  to  the 
celebration  of  the  tercentenary  of  Shake- 
speare's death  by  producing,  at  the  Century 
Theater,  a  notable  rendition  of  The  Tempest, 
in  which  he  also  played  the  part  of  Prospero. 

These  activities — as  actor  and  as  stage- 
director — have  kept  Mr.  Calvert  "  on  the 
front  page,"  so  to  speak,  throughout  the 
last  ten  years;  but  the  reading  public  may 
need  to  be  reminded  of  the  long  and  arduous 
experience  which  preceded  these  achievements 
of  his  prime. 

Louis  Calvert  was  born  in  Manchester  on 
November  25,  1859.  He  comes  of  an  old  and 
celebrated  family  of  actors;  and  his  mother, 
Mrs.  Charles  Calvert,  is  remembered  not  only 
as  a  very  able  actress  but  also  as  the  author 
of  an  interesting  book  of  memoirs,  entitled 
Sixty-eight  Years  on  the  Stage.  Louis  Cal- 
vert made  his  first  appearance  in  1878,  at  the 
Theater  Royal,  Durban,  in  Natal.  The  next 
year,  he  traveled  from  South  Africa  to  Aus- 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 

tralia  and  acted  at  the  Theater  Royal,  Mel- 
bourne. In  1880,  he  returned  to  England; 
toured,  for  a  time,  with  John  Dewhurst,  Miss 
Wallis,  and  Osmond  Tearle;  and  played  a 
"  stock "  season  at  Margate  with  Sarah 
Thorne.  Mr.  Calvert's  first  appearance  in 
London  was  made  at  the  Drury  Lane  Thea- 
ter in  1886,  in  a  piece  called  A  Run  of 
Luck,  The  next  year,  he  was  engaged  with 
Henry  Irving  at  the  Lyceum  Theater.  Mr. 
Calvert  came  to  America  for  the  first  time 
in  1887,  and  toured  this  country  for  two  sea- 
sons in  support  of  Mrs.  Langtry. 

After  his  return  to  England,  Mr.  Calvert 
organized  in  1890  a  company  of  his  own  and 
produced,  in  the  provinces,  a  large  number  of 
Shakespeare's  plays.  Browning's  A  Blot  in 
the  ^Scutcheon,  Ibsen's  Rosviersholm  and  An 
Enemy  of  the  People,  and  Goethe's  Clavigo, 

At  Her  Majesty's  Theater,  in  London,  in 
1898,  Mr.  Calvert  assisted  Sir  Herbert  Tree 
in  producing  Julius  Ccesar  and  played  the 
part  of  Casca;  and,  the  next  year,  he  created 
the  character  of  Porthos  in  The  Musketeers, 
In  1899,  he  returned  to  the  Lyceum  Theater, 
and  appeared  once  more  in  the  company  of 
Sir   Henry   Irving,   as   Billaud-Varennes   in 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION 

Robespierre.  In  1900,  he  directed  the  first 
EngHsh  production  of  Cyrano  de  Bergerac, 
with  Sir  Charles  Wyndham  in  the  leading 
part.  In  1901  he  appeared,  at  the  Globe 
Theater,  in  Sweet  Nell  of  Old  Drury;  and,  at 
the  Comedy  Theater,  in  1904,  he  played  the 
part  of  Towzer  in  Sunday. 

In  1905,  when  Vedrenne  and  Barker  initi- 
ated their  epoch-making  series  of  experiments 
at  the  Court  Theater  in  Sloane  Square,  Mr. 
Calvert  was  a  prominent  participant  in  their 
undertakings.  He  created  the  parts  of  John 
Broadbent  in  John  Bull's  Other  Island  and 
the  Waiter  in  You  Never  Can  Tell;  and — 
after  a  brief  interval  at  Wyndham's  Theater 
in  a  piece  called  Captain  Drew  on  Leave — he 
returned  to  the  Court  Theater  to  create  the 
part  of  Andrew  Undershaft  in  Major  Bar- 
bara and  to  resume  his  original  role  in  a  "  re- 
vival "  of  John  Bull's  Other  Island. 

In  the  autumn  of  1906,  Mr.  Calvert  pro- 
duced, at  the  New  Theater  in  London,  a  suc- 
cessful comic  opera  called  Amasis.  In  1907, 
in  conjunction  with  Frederic  Harrison,  he 
presented  Sweet  Kitty  Bellairs  at  the  Hay- 
market  Theater,  and  appeared  in  the  part  of 
Colonel  Villiers.    In  1908,  at  the  St.  James's 


INTRODUCTION  xxv 

Theater,  Mr.  Calvert  created  the  character 
of  James  Mortimore  in  The  Thunderbolt, — 
a  part  which  he  was  destined  later  to  resume 
at  the  New  Theater  in  NTew  York.  During 
the  same  year — 1908 — he  appeared  at  the 
Aldwych  Theater  as  Captain  Williams  in 
Paid  in  Full  and  at  the  Lyric  Theater  as 
Pistol  in  Henry  V. 

In  1909,  Mr.  Calvert  was  seen,  at  His 
Majesty's  Theater,  as  David  Ives  in  The 
Dancing  Girl;  at  the  Lyric  Theater,  as  Fal- 
staff  in  King  Henry  IV  [Part  /];  at  the 
Royalty  Theater,  as  Holt  St.  John  in  What 
the  Public  Wants;  and  again  at  His  Maj- 
esty's Theater,  as  Peter  Stockmann  in  An 
Enemy  of  the  People. 

A  momentary  glance  at  the  record  which 
has  been  reviewed  in  this  hasty  summary  of 
the  career  of  Mr.  Calvert  should  be  sufficient 
to  convince  the  most  skeptical  of  critics  that 
this  "  old-stager  "  is  competent  to  talk  about 
the  mainsprings  of  an  art  that,  to  most  ob- 
servers, has  remained  beyond  the  reach  of 
scientific  searching.  Mr.  Calvert  knows 
whereof  he  speaks.  For  forty  years,  he  has 
been  an  actor;  for  nearly  thirty  years,  he  has 
been  a  stage-director;  and,  during  these  ac- 


xxvi  INTRODUCTION 

cumulated  decades,  very  few  of  the  tricks  of 
his  trade  have  escaped  his  observation. 

If  the  writer  of  an  introduction  may  speak 
personally,  without  sacrifice  of  tact,  I  should 
like  to  say  that  I  have  learned  a  great  deal 
about  the  craftsmanship  of  acting  from  a 
studious  perusal  of  this  manuscript  of  Mr. 
Calvert's.  This  book  has  clarified  and  codi- 
fied many  principles  that  seemed,  in  my  own 
mind,  to  be  hovering  upon  the  verge  of  for- 
mulation. To  the  general  reader,  a  bald  and 
crude  confession  of  my  honest  wish  that  I 
might  have  been  endowed,  by  knowledge  and 
experience,  to  write  this  book  myself  may 
seem  extraneous;  but  such  confessions  are  not 
without  significance  for  men  whose  lives  are 
spent  in  a  sincere  endeavor  to  understand  and 
to  explain  the  problems  of  the  arts. 

Another  point  which  seems  to  me  remark- 
able is  the  purely  hterary  value  of  this  book 
of  Mr.  Calvert's.  He  has  written  not  only  a 
text-book  of  a  craft  that  stands  especially  in 
need  of  logical  elucidation,  but  also  a  creative 
and  unconscious  work  in  that  most  intimate 
of  literary  genres  which  is  labeled,  in  our 
libraries,  under  the  head  of  "  autobiography." 
Problems  of  the  Actor  may  be  recommended, 


INTRODUCTION  xxvii 

first  of  all,  as  a  serviceable  manual  for  those 
apprenticed  to  the  art  of  acting;  but  it  is 
interesting  also  to  those  whose  sense  of  life  ig 
more  insistent  than  their  sense  of  the  theater. 
The  sympathy,  the  kindliness,  the  humor,  the 
wisdom,  the  human  understanding,  and  the 
tact  displayed  by  Mr.  Calvert  in  the  composi- 
tion of  this  commentary  on  the  technique  of 
an  art  to  which  the  earnest  efforts  of  nearly 
half  a  century  have  been  applied,  appear — in 
my  opinion — to  lift  this  unpretentious  book 
to  the  level  of  creative  literature.  Literature 
may  be  defined  as  an  adequate  expression,  on 
the  printed  page,  of  a  great  love  for  a  great 
thing  that  has  been  felt  by  a  great  man.  .  .  . 
The  after-dinner  speaker  is  about  to  take 
his  seat.  ..."  Ladies  and  Gentlemen, — I 
present  to  you  an  actor  and  an  author, — Mr. 
Louis  Calvert.   ..." 

Clayton   Hamilton. 

New  York  City, 
February,   1918. 


PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 


CHAPTER  I    '         ._.... 

"  I  KNOW  I  HAVE  IT  IN  ME ! " 

Art  Must  Be  an  Absolute  Mistress — Selling  Our  Lives 
for  a  Price — Charlotte  Cushman's  Creed — Why  Do 
I  Want  to  Be  an  Actor? — Indispensable  Qualifica- 
tions: Enthusiasm^  "Humanity/'  Imagination,  Voice, 
Personal  Appearance. 

THERE  can  be  little  doubt  that  a  man's 
ultimate  position  in  the  dramatic  pro- 
fession depends  very  largely  upon  the 
motives  he  has  when  he  enters  it.  I  feel  that 
I  have  seen  the  truth  of  this  demonstrated 
over  and  over  again.  I  believe  I  may  state 
as  a  fact,  and  not  as  the  exhortation  of  an 
idealist,  that  unless  a  man  is  drawn  to  the 
art  of  acting  for  its  own  sake,  unless  he  is 
prepared  to  make  great  sacrifices  for  the 
sake  of  his  art,  he  can  never  attain  genuine 
success  on  the  stage.  If  he  vaguely  proposes 
to  use  the  stage  as  a  means  of  self-glorifica- 
tion, as  a  means  of  selfish  advancement,  it  is 

3 


4  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

a  simple  truth  that  he  will  be  incapable  of 
bringing  into  play  those  peculiar  qualities  of 
sincere  apj»lication  and  patient  study  which 
aa:^  '.essential  for  any  noteworthy  progress. 
Speaking  from  the  most  practical  point  of 
view,  it  does  not  pay  to  spend  one's  hfe.in 
an  art,  if  we  are  not  prepared  to  acknowledge 
the  supremacy  of  the  art,  to  realize  that  art 
is  to  be  our  master.  Art:  let  it  be  understood 
at  the  outset  that  I  shall  try  to  use  this 
much-abused  word  in  its  true  sense ;  or  rather, 
since  it  has  been  manhandled  so  promiscu- 
ously, perhaps  I  should  say  that  I  shall  try 
to  be  consistent  in  my  use  of  it.  All  acting 
is  not  art,  just  as  all  painting  is  not  art,  nor 
all  writing;  but  when  acting  takes  on  the 
imaginative,  creative  qualities  (as  all  great 
acting  must  do)  it  is  art.  Until  the  actor 
does  endow  his  work  with  these  precious  at- 
tributes, no  matter  how  skilful  he  may  be, 
he  is  a  craftsman,  not  an  artist.  So  we  shall 
speak  now  of  the  Craft  of  Acting,  again  of 
the  Art  of  Acting;  for  they  are  quite  distinct. 
We  may  analyze  the  technique  or  the  craft  of 


I 


"  I  KNOW  I  HAVE  IT  IN  ME !  "  5 

the  actor,  but  his  art  is  above  our  analysis, 
and  it  is  only  confusing — and  a  little  un- 
dignified— to  use  the  higher-sounding  word 
for  the  humbler  thing.  For  instance,  no  actor 
has  ever  been  a  "master  of  his  art";  he 
has  been  a  master  of  the  technicalities  only; 
and  he  has  made  himself  so  with  resolute 
patience.  Art,  in  its  true  sense,  is  infinite 
and  cannot  be  taught,  and  what  cannot  be 
taught  cannot  be  mastered.  We  must  serve 
our  art,  we  must  not  try  to  make  it  serve  us. 
And  if,  by  a  blind  devotion  and  enthu- 
siasm and  a  desire  and  willingness  to  work  in 
order  to  perfect  the  "feeling"  that  is  in  us, 
we  do  become  famous  at  last,  our  reward  is 
much  nobler  and  worth  the  great  effort  it 
has  cost.  We  shall  have  the  satisfaction  of 
knowing  that  we  have  run  straight,  and  that 
is  a  consideration  which  looms  much  larger  at 
sixty  than  it  does  at  twenty.  The  knowledge 
that  we  owe  our  advancement  to  honest  merit 
and  a  sincere  study  of  our  craft  will  bring 
a  pleasure  that  the  self-centered  man  never 
attains. 


6  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

There  are,  it  is  true,  thoroughly  selfish  men 
who  have  reached  what,  for  want  of  a  better 
name,  we  call  Success.  But  those  "  success- 
ful actors "  are  not  the  ones  who  are  re- 
membered long  after  their  work  is  done. 
They  may  have  won  a  certain  vogue  by  their 
cleverness;  but  the  enduring  esteem  of  those 
whose  opinions  count  is  founded  upon  a 
broader,  deeper  base.  How  much  better  our 
stage  would  be  if  we  had  more  men  like 
Edwin  Booth  in  the  profession.  No  name, 
in  my  opinion,  is  remembered  with  so  much 
reverence  and  affection  as  his.  He  was  a. 
man  full  of  the  kindest  consideration  for  his 
fellow  actors,  full  of  loyalty  to  the  best  in 
his  art.  His  fame  rests  upon  these  personal 
qualities  as  well  as  upon  his  technical  skill. 
The  great  Ristori,  also,  was  above  pettiness, 
above  professional  selfishness;  and  I  regard 
her  as  one  of  the  greatest  tragediennes  I  have 
ever  seen.  But  the  rewards  of  selfishness  are 
pretty  empty  at  best;  and  I  do  not  believe 
there  is  a  single  actor  who  has  reached  the 
pinnacle  of  his  ambition  through  unscrupu- 


"  I  KNOW  I  HAVE  IT  IN  ME !  "  7 

lous  methods  who  does  not  regret,  in  his  heart, 
that  he  did  not  achieve  it  with  clean  hands.  I 
know  men  who  have  won  this  kind  of  success, 
and  they  are  not  what  I  should  call  really 
happy.  The  reward  of  their  life-work  is  this 
"success";  but  of  what  use  is  it  to  them? 
Was  it  worth  spending  a  lifetime  to  win? 
It  is  worth  while  to  meditate  on  these  simple 
considerations  in  the  dewy  period  when  we 
are  preparing  to  sell  our  life  for  a  price — a 
period  we  all  pass  through.  It  is  worth  see- 
ing to  it  that  we  are  striving  for  something 
we  shall  be  glad  to  possess  after  the  struggle 
is  finished. 

*'  Nought's  had^  all's  spent 
Where  our  desire  is  got  without  content." 

Charlotte  Cushman,  on  her  farewell  night 
at  Booth's  Theater  in  1874,  said:  "To  be 
thoroughly  in  earnest,  intensely  in  earnest  in 
all  my  thoughts  and  actions,  became  my  single 
idea;  and  I  honestly  believe  herein  lies  the 
secret  of  my  success  in  life.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve any  great  success  in  any  art  can  be 
achieved  without  it.    I  say  this  to  the  begin- 


8  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

ners  in  my  profession;  and  I  am  sure  all  the 
associates  in  my  art,  who  have  honored  me 
with  their  presence  on  this  occasion,  will  in- 
dorse what  I  say  in  this:  Art  is  an  abso- 
lute mistress;  she  will  not  be  coquetted  with 
or  slighted;  she  requires  the  most  entire  self- 
devotion,  and  she  rewards  with  grand 
triumphs." 

Therefore  I  should  advise  anyone  who  is 
thinking  of  taking  up  the  stage  as  his  life- 
work  to  put  himself,  first  of  all,  under  a  rigid 
and  honest  examination;  and  that  he  discover 
from  whence  springs  his  desire  to  become  an 
actor.  If  he  has  a  general  notion  that  the 
actor's  is  a  pleasant  and  varied  life,  and  an 
easy  way  to  earn  his  bread  and  butter,  he 
should  admit  to  himself  that  that  is  the  rea- 
son he  feels  drawn  to  the  stage.  This  illu- 
sion about  the  theater  is  not  an  unnatural  one. 
No  profession,  I  venture  to  say,  looks  so  easy 
from  the  outside;  but  for  anyone  who,  thus 
lightly,  joins  the  ranks  of  actors  there  is  sure 
to  be  an  awakening  eventually.  I  think  the 
most  pathetic  spectacles,  in  a  profession  that 


" I  KNOW  I  HAVE  IT  IN  ME! "  9 

has  its  share  of  pathos,  are  the  failures  of 
those  who  might  have  been  successful  and 
content  if  they  had  followed  other  walks  in 
life  for  which  their  natural  attributes  fitted 
them.  But  as  actors  they  are  failures,  so 
regarded  by  themselves  and  their  friends,  and 
they  will  always  be  failures.  It  is  surely 
better,  then,  to  weigh  our  natural  advantages 
and  disadvantages  at  the  beginning  instead 
of  later. 

Of  course  it  is  much  easier  to  set  a  man 
looking  for  natural  aptitudes  than  it  is  to  tell 
him  what  they  are  and  just  which  ones  he 
should  possess  if  he  is  to  succeed  on  the 
stage.  It  is  not  possible  to  catalogue  and 
define,  in  such  a  matter,  and  it  would  be 
most  futile  to  attempt  it.  Indeed  in  all  our 
discussions  of  the  various  phases  of  the 
actor's  craft,  let  it  be  borne  in  mind  that  we 
are  not  attempting  to  dogmatize;  we  are 
attempting  to  reduce  the  actor's  ci^ft  to  any 
system  of  rules.  That  cai|||pPllfb  done.  You 
cannot  teach  a  person  to  he  an  actor  as  you 
teach  him  to  become  a  stenographer.     The 


10  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

actor's  real  work  begins  where  the  stenog- 
rapher's ends;  for  once  the  latter  has  mas- 
tered the  technicalities  of  shorthand  and  type- 
writing, it  is  thereafter  principally  a  question 
of  constant  practice.  But  the  actor  uses 
his  technical  groundwork  merely  as  a  founda- 
tion. As  he  goes  on  into  his  profession  his 
progress  depends  not  so  much  on  his  mastery 
of  the  simple  technique  of  using  his  hands 
and  feet,  getting  on  and  off  the  stage,  throw- 
ing out  his  voice,  and  the  like  (those  rudi- 
ments are  taken  for  granted) ;  but  he  must 
depend  more  upon  other  higher  qualities: 
imagination,  his  sense  of  humor,  his  "  per- 
sonality." In  acting,  as  in  stenography  or 
anything  else,  the  simple  rudiments  come  with 
practice,  and  only  thus.  But  acting  is  a  crea- 
tive art,  and  of  course  the  qualities  which 
enable  an  artist  to  create  are  above  the  rule 

thumb.  So  in  this  chapter,  and  throughout 
the  book,^^we  sh^l],.^trive^o  suggest,  not 
define,  and  ril(Bfc|p#Wmlate  the  beginner  in 
the  development  oT  his  own  abilities. 

There  is  one  big  attribute  that  a  man  either 


«l|g|tl] 
the 


"I  KNOW  I  HAVE  IT  IN  ME!"  11 

does  or  does  not  start  out  with:  that  is  En- 
thusiam.  I  beheve  Enthusiasna  is  the  first 
asset  a  man  or  woman  should  have  in  setting 
out  on  the  hazardous  journey  that  is  an  actor's 
hfe.  I  mean  genuine  enthusiasm  for  the  art 
of  acting  for  its  own  sake.  That  is  necessary. 
There  are  many  setbacks,  many  disheartening 
pitfalls  to  be  met,  but  enthusiasm  can  take 
care  of  them.  If  the  beginner  can  assure  him- 
self that  he  would  be  happier  having  tried  and 
failed  to  succeed  as  an  actor  than  he  could  be 
as  a  moderate  success  in  any  other  line  of 
work,  I  believe  he  may  feel  that  he  has  the 
enthusiasm  I  speak  of.  There  is  a  great 
deal  in  being  able  to  regard  it  all  as  a  game 
which  we  play  for  the  love  of  it,  a  game  to 
which  we  give  our  best  simply  because  we 
like  the  sport.  It  is  possible  to  go  at  the 
difficulties  as  we  would  the  hurdles  on  a  race- 
course, and  clear  them  for  the  fun  of  it. 
That  can  be  done  with  enthusiasm,  but  not 
without  it;  and  it  is  the  spirit  one  should  be 
pretty  sure  he  can  muster  before  he  starts 
out  to  be  an  actor. 


12  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

Another  big  attribute  is  what  actors  like 
to  call  "  humanity."  This  may  sound  like  a 
glittering  generality,  but  in  reality  it  is  a 
definite  and  concrete  thing.  It  is  a  simple 
fact  that  some  people  do  have  a  certain  warm 
response  and  sympathy  for  the  moods  of 
others,  and  some  do  not.  Without  this  fac- 
ulty, I  do  not  believe  a  person  can  ever 
touch  the  hearts  of  an  audience.  There  is  a 
peculiar  sensitive  sympathy  which  brings  a 
great  actor  or  actress  close  to  an  audience 
in  a  theater,  and  it  is  not  an  accident;  it  is 
a  real  and  positive  attribute  of  the  person  on 
the  stage.  I  should  say  that  it  corftes  from  a 
consideration  and  sympathy  for  men  and 
women.  Most  successful  actors  that  I  know 
are  the  kind  of  people  who  like  then'  fellow- 
beings.  They  may  not  be  conscious  of  it,  or 
admit  it,  but  they  do.  They  cannot  help 
feeling  for  and  with  other  people.  Humanity 
seems  the  best  term  for  it.  It  is  akin  to  what 
may  be  called  artistic  unselfishness,  without 
which,  I  am  firmly  convinced,  no  very  great 
success   is   attainable   in   a  profession  where 


«  I  KNOW  I  HAVE  IT  IN  ME !  "  13 

one  must  depend  upon  the  appeal  he  is  able 
to  make  to  the  sensitive  group -heart  of  an 
audience. 

I  know  a  young  actor  who  has  a  decided 
gift  of  clever  repartee.  He  has  the  knack 
of  turning  phrases  and  playing  with  words; 
there  is  always  a  keen  adroit  thrust  to  what 
he  says.  He  has  found,  it  seems  to  me,  that  if 
there  is  a  touch  of  cynicism  or  an  under-note 
of  cruelty  in  his  mots  they  are  more  likely  to 
strike  home.  Of  late  this  cynicism  and  this 
cruelty  have  grown  with  him.  In  whatever 
he  says  (to  my  ears)  there  is  the  hollow  ring 
of  insincerity,  it  colors  everything  he  says 
now.  It  is  having  an  effect  on  his  work.  He 
tinges  what  he  does  on  the  stage  with  this 
barbed  cleverness;  his  work  does  not  touch 
hearts  and  warm  them,  it  pricks  them.  The 
audiences  he  plays  before  do  not  give  him 
their  sympathy,  they  sense  the  superficiality 
of  any  emotion  he  seeks  to  portray;  and  I 
think  it  is  largely  because  all  his  emotions  in 
real  life  are  superficial.  I  firmly  believe  that 
unless  this  young  fellow  takes  hold  of  himself 


14  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

and  tries  to  overcome  his  ironic  habit  of  mind, 
the  poison  will  work  down  through  his  nature 
until  it  will  be  utterly  impossible  for  him  to 
hold  and  stir  and  move  an  audience.  And 
this  will  be  because  he  has  allowed  his  cynical 
cleverness  to  eat  away  what  I  call  humanity. 

I  feel  a  certain  confidence  in  making  this 
prophecy  about  him — or  about  anyone  of  his 
type — because  I  know  an  older  actor  in  the 
midst  of  his  career  who  has  failed  to  reach  the 
place  his  technical  abihties  could  gain  for  him 
simply  because  there  is  no  cordiality,  no 
warmth,  no  humanity  in  the  appeal  he  makes 
to  the  public.  He  too  has  this  verbal  clever- 
ness ;  and  he  has  allowed  it  to  fester  and  spoil 
his  career  in  large  measure.  There  is  a  subtle 
affinity  between  an  audience  and  an  actor, 
and  because  this  man,  in  reality,  lacks  the 
power — or  rather  has  allowed  himself  to  lose 
the  power — of  feeling  and  suffering  sincerely, 
this  affinity  is  broken,  and  he  never  succeeds 
in  making  his  audiences  feel  his  emotions  as 
their  own. 

I   am  thinking,   also,   of  an   actress   with 


"  I  KNOW  I  HAVE  IT  IN  ME !  "  15 

whom  I  was  associated  in  my  youth.  She  was 
full  of  dramatic  power,  she  had  a  thorough 
mastery  of  technique;  but  her  acting,  brilliant 
though  it  was,  had  a  coldness  and  detachment 
about  it.  She  had  few  faults  as  an  actress, 
but  one  of  them  was  fatal:  she  lacked  the 
power  to  attract  the  public.  While  she  was 
young  her  public  forgave  her  many  things, 
but  as  she  grew  older,  and  lost  the  precious 
bloom  of  youth,  they  turned  away  from  her. 
Eventually  she  retired  from  the  stage  in  dis- 
couragement, and  was  soon  forgotten.  I  be- 
lieve this  failure  of  hers  lay,  not  the  least  in 
her  work,  but  in  herself.  She  herself  was  a 
brilliant  woman,  but  cold,  quite  unresponsive 
to  the  gentler  emotions  of  cordiality  and  sim- 
ple warmness  of  heart.  She  pretended  to  no 
love  of  humanity,  indeed  she  seemed  rather 
to  foster  a  certain  disdain  for  mankind  in 
general. 

I  do  not,  for  a  moment,  believe  that  the 
germ  of  humanity  had  been  absent  from  her 
nature  when  she  was  young,  but  certainly  she 
had  not  allowed  it  to  develop.    Whether  such 


16  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

an  impalpable  quality  as  humanity  can  be 
deliberately  cultivated  may  be  a  question, 
but  it  is  my  opinion  that  it  can  be.  We  can, 
by  taking  thought,  guide  ourselves  in  our 
attitude  toward  others;  and  if  we  are  to 
reproduce  faithfully  real  people  and  real  emo- 
tions as  our  life-work,  it  is  essential  that  we 
;know  people  sympathetically,  and  like  them, 
and  feel  with  them  when  they  laugh  or  sigh. 
In  any  case,  it  is  such  a  vital  qualification 
for  anyone  who  thinks  of  taking  up  the  stage, 
that  it  is  worth  serious  thought  and  effort. 

One  should  also  be  gifted  with  imagination; 
and  be  possessed  of  a  temperament  that  is 
far  from  placid;  while  a  sense.  oLimmor  is 
indeed  one  of  the  prime  requisites.  If  one 
does  not  possess  these  germs  in  his  composi- 
tion, there  seems  httle  doubt  that  he  will  be 
more  or  less  handicapped  from  the  outset. 

With  regard  to  the  more  obvious  require- 
ments the  voice,  naturally,  is  the  most  impor- 
tant. If  there  is  any  defect  in  it  that  cannot 
be  remedied,  it  is  only  wisdom  to  cast  aside  all 
thoughts   of   the   stage.      Of   course   it   may 


"  I  KNOW  I  HAVE  IT  IN  ME !  "         17 

have  many  defects,  yet  still  be  capable  of  be- 
coming a  powerful  instrument  through  one's 
diligence  and  hard  work  in  perfecting  it.  A 
great  essential  to  the  proper  development  and 
management  of  the  voice,  too,  is  an  eax-ioiL 
music.  I  do  not  believe  that  a  person  who 
does  not  possess  a  fairly  good  ear  can  ever 
speak  with  any  great  effectiveness  on  the 
stage.  He  cannot  do  it,  I  am  very  sure,  with- 
out a  disproportionate  amount  of  labor.  The 
natural  speaking  voice,  after  all,  is  full  of 
music;  and  it  is  as  necessary,  on  the  stage,  to 
speak  at  concert  pitch  as  it  is  to  sing  at  con- 
cert pitch.  One  should  be  able  to  catch  tones 
of  voice  frpm  others,  and  to  give  tones  accu- 
rately himself,  or  the  quality  of  his  speech 
cannot  be  pleasing  or  attractive  to  an  audi- 
ence. 

Physical  fitness  is  also  a  point  to  consider. 
The  stage  is  not  a  place  for  a  person  who  is 
deformed — that  is  one  of  the  limitations  of 
the  art  of  the  theater,  and  one  of  its  misfor- 
tunes. Cripples  have  become  great  painters, 
great  musicians,  great  writers;  but  the  diffi- 


18  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

culties  such  a  person  must  overcome  on  the 
stage  are,  obviously,  well-nigh  insuperable. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  do  not  regard  noticeable 
physical  attractiveness  as  one  of  the  prime 
requisites  for  a  successful  stage  career.  I 
am  not  even  sure  that  a  handsome  face  and 
figure  are  always  helpful.  There  is  a  natural 
temptation  to  depend  too  much  on  one's  pres- 
ence, and  to  disregard  the  development  of 
other,  more  enduring,  qualities.  I  think  a 
reasonably  healthy  and  pleasing  appearance 
is  all  one  needs. 

I  do  not  mean  that  one  who  possesses  all 
of  these  indispensable  primary  qualifications, 
even  in  a  marked  degree,  has  any  open  road 
before  him.  I  do  not  mean  that  they  give 
him  any  particular  advantage,  but  simply  that 
they  entitle  him  to  enter  the  struggle — with- 
out them  he  would  be  foolish  to  enter  it  at 
all.  Given,  then,  these  general  qualifications 
one  is  faced  with  the  vital  problem  of  choos- 
ing the  door  through  which  he  is  to  enter  his 
profession. 


CHAPTER  II 
ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION 

Competition  in  Actor's  Profession  No  Keener  than  in 
Any  Other— "Pull"  of  Little  Value— The  Road 
Company — The  Evils  of  Endless  Repetition — Stay- 
ing on  Broadway — How  One-part  Actors  Are  Devel-  ^ 
oped — Actor  and  Manager  Both  Harmed  by  "  Type  " 
Casting — The  Stock  Company — The  Varied  Experi- 
ence It  Provides — The  Repertoire — No  Star,  No 
Squirrel-in-a-Cage   Routine,  Team-work. 

I  FEEL  that  I  should  remind  anyone  who 
is  ambitious  to  enter  the  dramatic  profes- 
sion that  the  purpose  of  this  book  is  to  en- 
courage, not  discourage.  It  is  inevitable,  as  we 
examine  the  conditions  which  prevail  in  the 
theater, — and  especially  those  which  affect  the 
novice — that  we  should  speak  first  of  all  of  the 
difficulties  he  may  expect  to  meet.  We  should 
not  exaggerate  those  hardships  nor  paint  too 
dismaying  a  picture  of  them.  It  is  well  to 
know  the  difficulties  are  there,  and  to  know 
something  of  their  nature;  but  it  is  a  mistake 

19 


20  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

a 

■  '^  ^.      to  be  frightened  by  them.     If  a  man  is  to 
succeed  in  any  profession  he  must  be  pre- 
pared   to    overcome    innumerable    obstacles. 
The  competition  in  the  actor's  profession  is 
keen,  but  no  keener  than  in  the  lawyer's  pro- 
fession  or   the   physician's   profession.      The 
■J    secretof^success^^in  this  profession,  as  in  any 
yii^J^t^,  is  hard  work  properly  directed.     It  is 
not  by '  any  divine  dispensation  nor  any  in- 
nate  strain  of  unique  genius  that  an  actor 
reaches   success;  to  my  mind  the  successful 
"^         professional  actor  is  a  greater  being  than  the 

^  ambitious  amateur  only  by  virtue  of  longer 
experience  and  harder  work.  No  matter 
what  the  youngster  might  set  his  heart  on 
and  go  after,  he  would  find  a  lot  of  others 
after  the  same  thing;  and  his  chance  of  get- 
ting it  would  be  as  good  as  theirs.  The  per- 
son who  succeeds  in  this  profession  is  the  one 
who  sets  himself  to  master  the  technical 
phases  of  his  craft,  and  guides  his  course  un- 
swervingly by  the  principles  which  his  study 
proves  are  sound. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  think  in  the  actor's 


ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION  21 

profession,  more  perhaps  than  in  any  other, 
the  beginner  starts  on  even  terms  with  his 
competitors.  "  Pull  "  and  "  influence  "  can 
have  little  to  do  with  progress  on  the  stage. 
The  young  man  or  woman  who  is  pushed 
along  prematurely  is  only  harmed.  If  a 
young  actor  makes  a  failure  in  a  part  that  is 
too  big  for  him,  his  path  thereafter  is  much 
harder  than  that  of  the  man  who  plugs  along  . 
in  unimportant  parts,  many  of  which  may  be 
unworthy  of  his  ability;  but  which  enable  him 
to  rise  eventually  on  his  own  merits. 

I  have  often  been  asked  for  advice  on  the 
best  way  to  set  about  becoming  an  actor.  It 
is  a  question  about  which  one  hesitates  to  be 
arbitrary,  although  to  me  there  seems  but 
one  answer  possible.  Before  I  state  my 
opinion,  however,  it  might  be  profitable  to 
speak  of  the  various  possibilities  which  are 
open. 

Usually  the  first  thing  the  novice  pro- 
poses is  to  go  to  New  York  and  make  the 
rounds  of  the  managers'  offices  looking  for  an 
engagement.     If  one  does  this,  he  may  sue- 


22  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

ceed  in  getting  work  in  a  road  company  or- 
ganized to  exploit  some  one  particular  play, 
which  has  already  made  a  success  in  the 
metropolis.  The  majority  of  actors  in  this 
country  earn  their  living  in  companies  of  this 
kind.  They  engage  to  play  on  the  road  for 
an  average  of  from  thirty  to  forty  weeks  in 
a  season,  and  to  give  eight  performances  a 
week.  This  means  that  they  repeat  their  re- 
spective parts  over  two  or  three  hundred 
times.  After  a  man  finds  himself  and  gets 
some  sort  of  start  in  his  career,  such  a  life 
is  not  without  its  compensations;  but  while 
he's  a  fledgling,  with  everything  to  learn,  it 
is,  in  my  opinion,  worse  than  useless. 

Of  course  the  part  which  an  unknown 
would  get  would  be  very  small,  containing 
only  a  few  unimportant  lines.  One  can  learn 
little  about  the  art  of  acting  by  repeating 
the  same  few  lines  three  hundred  times.  In 
spite  of  the  best  intentions  in  the  world  he 
is  likely  to  fall  into  the  way  of  parroting 
his  lines,  and  going  through  the  scanty  stage 
business  he  may  have  with  scarcely  a  thought 


ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION  23 

of  its  bearing  on  the  play.  Even  with  the 
best  of  actors,  this  constant  and  endless  repe- 
tition is  apt  to  become  pretty  mechanical. 
Forbes-Robertson  once  told  me,  when  he  was 
playing  in  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor 
Backj  that  the  part  was  making  him  terribly 
nervous.  He  said  that  once  or  twice  he  had 
actually  forgotten  what  act  he  was  in  at  the 
moment;  and  then,  on  coming  to  him.self,  had 
been  amazed  to  find  that  his  tongue  was  faith- 
fully repeating  the  proper  lines!  And  if  the  \ 
constant  repetition  consequent  to  a  long  run 
has  such  an  effect  on  a  finished  artist  like 
Forbes-Robertson  it  is  easy  to  imagine  what 
it  might  do  to  a  man  of  tender  experience. 

The  great  Madame  Ristori  never  played  in 
English  until  she  was  nearly  seventy  years 
of  age.  She  never  really  learned  English 
of  course;  that  is  she  thought  in  Italian, 
and  learned  the  English  words  of  her  parts 
by  their  sound.  She  was  able  to  do  most 
effective  work,  great  actress  that  she  was, 
but  this  practice  of  parroting  had  its  dan- 
gers.   When  she  was  supposed  to  say  to  Lord 


24  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

Burleigh,  "  Ah,  remember  Babbington's 
bloody  head,  my  old  friend!  "  she  said  instead, 
"  Remember  Babbington's  head,  my  bloody 
old  friend!"  This,  of  course,  is  an  un- 
usual case,  but  parroting  of  any  kind  is 
dangerous. 

As  a  young  man  I  was  touring  in  Eng- 
land as  Pierre  Lorance  in  a  play  called  Proofs 
which  was  later  produced  in  this  country 
under  the  name  of  A  Celebrated  Case,  We 
opened  in  Nottingham  one  Monday  night,  and 
I  believe  it  must  have  been  about  my  two- 
hundredth  performance  of  the  part.  When  I 
came  to  the  theater  on  Tuesday  morning 
there  was  a  letter  waiting  for  me.    It  began: 

"  My  Dear  Sir, 

What  have  you  been  doing  to  yourself?  I  saw 
you  play  this  part  three  months  ago  and  you  were  fine. 
But  now,  I  assure  you,  you  are  lamentable.  I  would 
advise  that  you  pull  yourself  together." 

There  was  no  signature  or  address.  There 
was  no  way  of  finding  out  who  the  writer 
was.  If  there  had  been  I  might  have  sup- 
posed that  it  was  written  by  someone  who 


I 


ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION  25 

wanted  to  impress  me  with  his  knowledge  of 
the  stage.  But  I  could  see  no  reason  for  his 
taking  the  trouble  to  write  a  letter  to  me  ex- 
cept an  honest  artistic  resentment.  I  told 
the  manager  of  the  theater  about  it  and  he 
said:  "The  man's  crazy.  I  was  in  front 
last  night  and  saw  your  performance.  There 
was  nothing  wrong  with  it  that  I  could  see." 
But  this  did  not  satisfy  me.  I  worried  all 
day  trying  to  determine  what  the  man  could 
have  seen  in  my  work  which  had  so  roused  his 
antagonism.  Then,  that  evening,  in  the 
second  act  where  I  came  on  in  chains,  having 
been  put  into  prison  for  the  murder  of  my 
wife  (of  which  I  was  innocent),  I  caught 
myself  up  in  the  middle  of  my  speech.  I 
was  saying  something  about  the  twelve  long, 
weary  years  I  had  worked  on  the  roads  and 
inside  the  prison  walls  linked  with  thieves 
and  murderers  .  .  .  and  suddenly  I  real- 
ized that  those  words  were  meaning  nothing 
to  me!  I  had  grown  to  love  the  sound  of 
them,  I  had  got  far  away  from  the  poignant 
tragedy  in  them,  and  was  thinking  only  of 


26  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

the  momentary  effect  the  hnes  might  have. 
Then  I  knew  why  my  unknown  friend  had 
tried  to  set  me  right.  But  my  fault  was  due 
to  the  long  repetition  of  the  part.  This  is 
certainly  not  the  sort  of  apprenticeship  that 
is  of  much  value  to  the  novice  who  is 
eager  to  learn  the  fundamentals  of  his  life- 
work. 

Another  way  of  making  a  start  is  to  re- 
main permanently  in  New  York  and  seek 
engagements  in  the  new  plays  which  are 
produced  on  Broadway  each  season.  The 
parts  available  will  be  mostly  so-called  "  walk- 
ing on "  parts.  One  is  given  the  privilege 
of  coming  on  the  stage  each  night  with  the 
"crowd  of  citizens"  or  the  "other  guests";  j 
and  of  course  there  is  a  chance  of  securing  a 
small  speaking  part  sooner  or  later.  One  may 
remain  with  the  play  until  the  end  of  the 
New  York  run,  then  cut  himself  adrift  and 
look  for  another  part.  But  such  a  plan  re- 
quires sufficient  money  in  hand  to  tide  across 
from  one  engagement  to  the  next,  which  pe- 
riods  of   "  rest "   may   be    of   one   week   or 


ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION  27 

many;  and  those  weeks  of  idleness  are  valu- 
able time  thrown  away. 

There  is  another  big  danger  in  starting 
in  such  a  way  as  this.  The  young  and  un- 
known applicant,  when  he  does  receive  a 
part,  is  engaged  not  because  he  has  any  par- 
ticular ability  for  it  but  because  his  physical 
appearance  is  more  or  less  what  is  required. 
If,  in  his  first  part  of  this  kind,  he  does  satis- 
factory work  the  next  one  he  is  given  is  likely 
to  be  of  the  same  type.  As  his  work  becomes 
known  to  the  managers,  they  naturally  asso- 
ciate him  with  this  particular  type  which  he 
has  happened  to  fall  into  and  do  well.  That 
is  the  way  one-part  or  "  type "  actors  are 
developed.  Once  a  man  gets  definitely  asso-, 
ciated  with  a  certain  kind  of  part  he  is  likely 
to  be  doomed  to  play  the  same  old  part  for 
the  rest  of  his  life.  This  is  a  blessing  for 
the  man  who  can  play  only  one  part  well,  but 
it  is  hard  for  the  man  capable  of  doing  other 
things  equally  well.  If  a  man  is  strong 
enough  he  will  fight  his  way  out  of  the  ruck, 
but  it  takes   a  pretty  strong  effort  and  a 


28  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

great  deal  of  courage  and  sacrifice  often — 
and  the  better  the  man  is  at  his  unwelcome 
specialty,  the  harder  it  is  for  him  to  break 
away  from  it. 

From  the  actor's  point  of  view  there  may 
seem  to  be  two  sides  to  this  special  part 
proposition,  since  it  enables  many  an  indif- 
ferent actor  to  earn  a  good  living  who  would 
find  himself  hard  put  to  it  if  he  did  not  have 
his  specialty  to  carry  him  along.  But  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  author  and  the  pro- 
ducer there  is  only  one  side:  the  play  always 
suffers.  Indeed  this  casting  of  plays  with 
types  seems  a  great  weakness  in  the  system. 
If  the  play  calls  for  a  butler  the  actor  who 
played  butlers  last  season  and  the  season  be- 
fore that  is  sent  for.  When  he  comes  on 
the  stage  he  is  a  familiar  figure  to  many  in 
the  audience.  They  have  seen  him  as  a 
butler  time  and  time  again.  They  know  just 
how  he  is  going  about  it.  They  know  just 
the  kind  of  a  butler  he  is.  Surely  this  can- 
not but  have  a  detrimental  effect  on  the  play. 
The  suggestion  received  by  the  audience,  un- 


ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION  29 

consciously  perhaps,  is  that  the  old  material 
has  been  hashed  up   for  them  again.     This 
may  be  rather  a  trivial  matter,  but  anything 
that  tends  to  suggest  conventionality  is  cer- 
tainly to  be  shunned  when  a  new  play  is  put 
on.     There  are  usually  plenty  who  will  see 
conventionality  in  it  anyway,  always  plenty 
who  will  be  looking  for  it;  surely  we  should 
do  everything  we  can  do  beforehand  to  anti- 
cipate this  criticism.    And,  in  any  case,  it  is 
unquestionably  bad  business   policy  to   sug- 
gest other  plays  while  the  new  one  is  being 
tried.     The  object  is  to  make  the  play  seem 
as  fresh  and  new  as  possible,  and  one  good 
way  to  defeat  this  object  is  to  remind  the 
audience  of  the  many  other  plays  which  have 
contained,  in  general,  the  same  set  of  char- 
acters.    But  even  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the   actor   this   special  type   casting   is   very 
unfortunate.    It  is  deadening  to  the  actor  who 
has  his  heart  set  on  big  things,  in  the  first 
place;   in   the   second   place,   most    one-part 
actors  find  themselves  out  of  date  sooner  or 
later,   the   vogue    for   their   special   way   of 


30  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

doing  their  special  kind  of  part  has  waned, 
and  since  no  one  thinks  of  them  as  anything 
but  what  they  have  been  doing  all  their  lives, 
they  are  fast  relegated  to  the  ranks  of  the 
has-beens. 

The  beginner  in  the  profession  with  no 
experience  of  any  kind  who  presents  himself 
to  the  New  York  manager  can  only  expect 
to  be  chosen  because  he  "  looks  the  part."  I 
certainly  do  not  consider  this  the  proper  way 
to  make  a  beginning;  that  road  does  not 
lead  very  far  or  very  high  in  the  actor's 
profession. 

These,  then,  are  a  few  of  the  objections,  to 
the  road  company  and  the  New  York  com- 
pany. They  would  seem  to  condemn  both  as 
avenues  of  advancement  for  the  novice  who 
has  his  hopes  set  on  the  better  things.  Two 
other  possibilities  are  open:  the  Stock  Com- 
pany or  the  Repertoire  Company. 

In  a  stock  company  the  novice  has  the 
chance  to  play  many  different  parts  in  a 
year;  though  they  may  be  small,  they  will 
be   widely   varied,   and   each   one   can   teach 


ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION  31 

him  something.  He  will  have  his  chance  as 
rich  man,  poor  man,  beggar-man,  and  thief, 
as  old  men  and  as  young  men.  He  is  able 
to  study  at  close  range  and  on  a  simpler 
model  the  intricate  mechanism  which  is  the 
theater. 

In  a  stock  company  the  observation  one  is 
able  to  practise  on  actors  of  more  experience 
is  most  valuable.  He  can  study  the  different 
gaits,  the  variations  of  voice  and  gesture, 
which  the  older  heads  use  in  their  different 
impersonations.  The  beginner  is  very  re- 
ceptive and  very  impressionable;  if  he  does 
not  start  in  a  stock  company  but  in  a  one- 
play  company,  where  the  star  is  playing  one 
part  over  and  over,  he  is  in  danger  of  aping 
the  mannerisms  of  the  star,  and  of  having 
his  ideas  of  successful  acting  too  strongly 
flavored  with  the  star's  methods.  In  a  stock 
company,  too,  one  learns  to  depend  on  him- 
self, for  the  producer  who  directs  a  new 
piece  each  week  has  no  time  to  give  his  actors 
much  individual  attention.  The  actor  is  left 
to  himself  to  a  certain  extent,  and  this  in 


32  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

itself  spurs  him  on.  He  gets  a  good  stiff 
training  in  learning  his  lines  quickly,  and 
he  acquires  the  faculty — a  blessed  one — of 
/larruping  himself  into  doing  what  he  has 
to  do  with  directness  and  dispatch,  for  that 
is  the  way  things  must  be  done  in  a  stock 
company  if  they  are  done  at  all.  This  ex- 
perience does  not  put  on  a  high  polish,  but 
it  may  be  depended  upon  to  provide  a  good 
grounding  in  the  primaries  of  acting,  and  to 
give  a  certain  versatility.  I  believe  a  season, 
or  even  two  seasons,  in  stock  is  of  the  greatest 
value  at  the  outset  of  any  career. 

In  many  ways  it  would  seem  to  be  the 
best  place  in  which  to  make  a  beginning; 
though  it  IS  true  the  Repertoire  possesses 
some  advantages  that  stock  does  not.  The 
work  one  does  in  a  repertoire  company  is  a 
bit  more  thorough,  a  bit  more  finished;  but 
we  learn  lessons  in  stock  that  we  cannot  learn 
anywhere  else.  Our  experience  there  is  more 
elementary,  and  we  should  get  the  elementary 
things  first.  But,  in  this  country,  there  are 
practically   no   repertoire   companies   to   get 


ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION  33 

into.  There  have  been  occasional  sporadic 
attempts  to  found  them,  and  some  of  these 
have  met  with  gratifying  success;  as  in  the 
case  of  Miss  Grace  George's  Playhouse 
Company,  Robert  Mantell's  ShakespeariaiL.  ^^7^ 
Repertoire,     and    the    Washington     Square  ^ 

Players,  who  have  a  semi-repertoire  policy. 
As  an  accepted  institution,  however,  the 
Repertoire  is  not  established  and  developed 
to  the  extent  that  some  of  us,  who  have  had 
experience  with  it,  could  wish. 

Such  a  company  has  a  group  of  four  to 
six,  and  sometimes  more,  plays,  each  of  which 
they  repeat  at  intervals.  For  a  young  actor 
with  a  little  experience  in  stock  or  elsewhere 
it  is  no  doubt  the  ideal  place  in  which  to 
improve;  whether  it  is  the  place  to  get  the 
first  lessons  is  a  question.  The  virtues  of 
such  a  company  are  apparent.  Let  us  sup- 
pose that  they  have  a  repertoire  of  eight 
plays.  One  finishes  his  work  on  the  Monday 
night,  and  realizes  that  he  might  have  acted 
certain  portions  of  his  part  much  better.  He 
knows  the  same  play  will  be  repeated  the 


34  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

following  Monday  night  and  he  has  a  week  in 
which  to  practise,  at  odd  moments,  the  im- 
provements he  wants  to  make.  By  the  time 
the  next  Monday  night  rolls  around  he  has 
been  able  to  correct  the  faults  he  has  found 
in  his  performance  and  those  the  producer 
has  found.  He  is  able  to  get  some  polish  in 
every  part  he  plays  under  such  conditions, 
and  he  gets  many  of  the  benefits  of  a  Stock 
Company  as  well.  But  I  think  if  one  has 
put  himself  through  the  mill  of  a  stock 
company  first,  he  knows  better  what  he  is 
trying  to  do,  and  the  experience  means  more 
to  him. 

In  my  youth  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that, 
if  I  was  to  do  any  good,  in  my  profession, 
I  must  shut  my  eyes  to  the  fact  that  money 
was  to  be  made  by  joining  a  one-play  com- 
pany, and  open  them  to  the  fact  that  it  was 
in  a  company  playing  many  pieces  that  I 
could  get  the  things  that  counted.  Luckily, 
there  were  plenty  of  such  companies,  and  for 
years  I  managed  to  be  continually  in  one  or 
the  other.     With  a  lady  named  Miss  Wallis 


ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION  35 

I  played  in  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Much  Ado 
About  Nothing,  Measure  for  Measure,  The 
Lady  of  Lyons,  As  You  Like  It,  and  Adri- 
enne  Lecouvreur,  With  Osmond  Tearle 
(old  playgoers  will  probably  remember  him 
as  the  leading  man  at  Wallack's  Theater  in 
the  eighties)  I  played  in  Macbeth,  Hamlet, 
Othello,  Richard  III,  Money,  London  Assur- 
ance, Colleen  Bawn,  and  many  others.  So  I 
feel  that  I  may  speak  with  some  knowledge 
of  what  the  Repertoire  system  means. 

The  work  in  Repertoire  is  not  irksome. 
The  actor  does  not  merely  drag  himself  to 
the  theater  to  repeat  what  he  has  done  the 
day  before.  Each  day  it  is  something  dif-  ^^ 
ferent,  and  the  constant  change  keeps  him 
on  the  alert.  Each  day  he  plays  a  part  that 
has  lain  fallow  for  days;  and  if  he  is  in 
good  professional  health,  he  is  anxious  to 
play  it  again  and  try  improvements  on  it. 
One  gets  away  from  the  squirrel-in-a-cage 
routine  which  is  the  great  foe  to  keeping  the 
precious  enthusiasm  we  must  have  if  prog- 
ress is  to  come. 


36  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

The  young  actor  learns  early,  too,  the 
great  value  of  team-work,  and  unfortunately 
this  great  asset  of  the  actor's  craft  is  prac- 
tically dead  in  America  today.  I  happen 
to  know  of  only  two  instances  where  it  is 
kept  ahve.  There  may  be  stock  companies 
here  and  there  who  have  this  esprit  de  corps, 
this  give  and  take;  but  the  weekly  change  of 
bill  is  sure  to  work  against  it.  The  mem- 
bers of  a  Repertoire  Company,  however,  have 
generally  been  together  for  so  long  that 
they  understand  the  abilities  and  shortcom- 
ings of  each  other,  and  each  is  ready  to  help 
the  other  over  the  difficult  places.  Selfishness 
is  rarely  found  in  such  a  company,  because 
everyone  knows  everyone  else  too  well;  and 
when  some  over-ambitious  brother  tries  to 
force  himself  on  the  attention  of  the  audi- 
ence, at  the  expense  of  the  play,  he  is  likely 
to  be  thoroughly  discouraged.  Generally  it 
is  the  rule  in  such  companies,  whether  defi- 
nitely expressed  or  not,  that  the  less  experi- 
enced actor  is  to  get  as  much  consideration 
as  his  superiors  in  the  piece.     It  is  on  this 


ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION  37 

principle  that  the  success  of  a  Repertoire 
depends;  for  the  balance  and  general  excel- 
lence of  the  productions  must  be  relied  upon 
to  make  up  for  the  lack  of  big  names.  Thus, 
when  Morocco  speaks,  the  Portia  will  not  do 
anything  to  call  attention  to  herself,  but  is 
more  likely  to  do  all  she  can  to  help.  When 
Menas  tempts  Pompey  to  become  master  of 
the  world  by  cutting  the  throats  of  Caesar, 
Lepidus,  and  Antony,  the  actor  playing 
Menas — though  he  has  but  two  short  scenes 
— will  have  the  chance  to  make  his  benevolent 
proposition  to  the  best  of  his  ability.  The 
audience  will  not  be  distracted  by  the  buf- 
foonery of  the  actor  playing  Antony.  It 
was  a  distressing  spectacle  for  me  once,  while 
watching  a  company  play  this  scene,  to  see 
the  man  playing  Antony  pour  wine  over  the 
drunken  Lepidus's  head,  merely  to  focus  at- 
tention on  himself!  The  beginning  actor  is 
free  from  such  childish  annoyances  in  a  reper- 
toire company. 

Another    advantage    of    Repertoire    over 
Stock  is  that,  in  the  former  there  is  no  star. 


38  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

In  the  nature  of  the  work,  there  cannot  well 
be  one.  Suppose,  for  instance,  a  company 
has  a  program  for  the  week  as  follows: 
Monday,  Hamlet;  Tuesday,  Romeo  and 
Juliet;  Wednesday,  A  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream;  Wednesday  matinee.  As  You  Like 
It;  Thursday,  first  part  of  Henry  IV;  Fri- 
day, Julius  Caesar;  Saturday,  Macbeth;  and 
Saturday  matinee.  The  Merchant  of  Venice, 
Under  the  star  system  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  play  such  a  varied  program; 
I  know  of  no  man  living  who  could 
play  the  principal  role  in  each  of  these 
plays. 

In  Jidius  Caesar,  for  example,  the  three 
great  parts,  Brutus,  Cassius,  and  Antony, 
should  be  played  by  actors  of  equal  ability. 
It  would  be  ridiculous  for  one  of  them  to 
be  played  by  a  star,  and  the  others  by  less 
accomplished  actors.  Then  in  Falstaff  we 
have  another  star  part  which  would  probably 
not  suit  a  single  one  of  the  three  principal 
actors  in  Julius  Caesar,  while  not  one  of  the 
four  could  play  Bottom.     Thus,  to  cast  the 


ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION  39 

week's  program  properly,  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  actors  would  be  required  for  the 
leading  roles.  Indeed  the  whole  of  the  com- 
pany— those  playing  "  responsible  business  " 
— would  have  to  be  of  star-caliber. 

Many  years  ago — in  1874  or  thereabouts 
— I  saw  the  Saxe-Meiningen  Company  at 
Drury  Lane  in  London.  They  were  playing 
Julius  Caesar,  and  they  had  reached  An- 
tony's speech  over  the  body  of  Caesar.  Oc- 
tavius,  Caesar's  servant,  entered,  and  the  dia- 
logue was  given: 

Antony.     You  serve  Octavius  Caesar,  do  you  not? 

Servant.    I  do,  Mark  Antony. 

Antony.     Caesar  did  send  for  him  to  come  to  Rome. 

Servant.  He  did  receive  his  letters  and  is  com- 
ing, and  bade  me  say  by  word  of  mouth.  .  .  .  Oh, 
Caesar ! 

As  to  the  meaning  of  this  cry,  "  Oh, 
Caesar!",  the  Servant,  on  entering,  cannot 
but  see  the  body  of  Caesar.  His  emotion,  on 
realizing  that  the  greatest  man  in  the  world 
lies  lifeless  on  the  ground,  shakes  him.  He 
endeavors  to  answer  Antony  as  a  servant; 


/ 


40  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

but  the  sight  is  too  much  for  him,  and  he 
breaks  down  and  cries  out  in  anguish,  "  Oh, 
Caesar! " 

Since  I  knew  the  play  I  was  expecting  the 

/  outburst,    but    when    it    came    it    lifted    me 

/    straight  out  of  my  seat.    I  can  hear  it  ringing 

/      in  my  ears  now  after  forty-odd  years.     The 

art  of  it  was  perfect,  it  rang  true,  it  was  a 

cry  of  anguish.     I   learned   afterward   that 

the  part  of  the  Servant  was  played  by  one 

of  their  best  actors,  who  had  several  arduous 

parts  to  perform,  and  who  was  willing  to  do 

a  small  bit  on  some  nights  for  the  good  of 

the  whole  company. 

I  think  it  is  worth  while  to  mention  this 
little  incident  because  it  illustrates  the  kind 
of  spirit  found  in  Repertoire  Companies; 
and  it  also  contains  a  moral  which  every  actor 
may  well  carry  with  him  through  his  novitiate. 
It  shows  what  can  be  done  even  with  the 
smallest  part.  This  man  gave  the  lines  of 
the  Servant,  few  though  they  were,  in  such 
a  way  that  they  carried  real  emotion,  in 
such  a  way  that  the  insignificant  character 


ENTERING  THE  PROFESSION  41 

made  a  genuine  contribution  to  the  atmos-  \ 
phere  and  moving  power  of  the  play.  In 
the  beginning  the  young  actor  receives  parts 
which  often  in  his  own  opinion,  and  some- 
times in  reality,  fall  far  below  his  abilities. 
But  however  shallow  a  part  may  seem,  it 
will  yield  a  "  moment "  or  two  if  we  search 
carefully.  There  are  a  dozen  ways  of  hand- 
ing a  man  a  letter,  one  of  which  is  best 
for  the  play;  we  can  help  the  star  into  his 
coat  in  many  ways,  one  of  which  may  add 
just  the  right  flavor  to  the  scene.  We  can 
make  a  distinct  person  of  the  tiniest  sketch, 
we  can  put  individuality  into  the  smallest 
part  if  we  try,  and  it  is  always  worth  while 
to  try.  We  should  not  judge  a  part  by  its 
length,  but  by  the  possible  "  moments  "  there 
may  be  in  it.  No  part  is  so  small  but  one, 
can  learn  something  from  playing  it. 

So  I  should  say  that  it  is  best  to  begin 
either  in  a  stock  or  a  repertoire  company 
where  we  play  parts  which  have  usually  been 
tested  by  time,  and  which  are  thus  more  or 
less  standard  material;  where  we  work  more 


42  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

than  one  vein  of  whatever  abihty  we  have; 
where  we  are  kept  close  to  the  big  funda- 
mental principles  which  must  govern  effec- 
tive work  on  the  stage. 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  VOICE— THE  INSTRUMENT  WE  PLAY 

Seeming  to  Speak  Naturally — The  Handicap  of  a  Half- 
trained  Voice — Our  Voice:  Our  Point  of  Contact 
with  Our  Public— The  Dread  of  "  Elocution  "—The 
Art  of  Concealing  Art — Harry  Lauder's  Remarkable 
Voice — Charles  Kean's  Stage  Voice — The  Power  of 
Tones — Saving  the  Voice — The  Two  Primary  Tones 
— Distinct  Utterance  a  Simple  Achievement — Laugh- 
ing Infectiously — Taste  in  Using  One's  Technical 
Skill. 

THE  beginner  is  often  told  by  the  di- 
rector not  to  strain  and  shout,  but  to 
"  speak  naturally  " ;  and  then  when  he 
does  speak  naturally  he  is  told  that  he  cannot 
be  heard.  This  is  a  baffling  paradox,  and 
one  which  everyone  who  takes  up  stage  work 
seriously  is  hkely  to  meet  sooner  or  later. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  the  natural  speaking 
voice  is  of  little  or  no  use  on  the  stage, 
and  neither  is  the  shout.  The  secret  of  it  is 
that  a  man  should  so  train  his  voice  that  he 

43 


44  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

has  the  range,  and  the  pitch  that  is  necessary, 
but  also  the  technique  and  the  control  which 
enable  him  to  seem  to  speak  naturally.  If 
we  are  to  be  good  actors  we  must  train  the 
voice,  and  study  its  use,  with  the  determina- 
tion to  make  it  the  best  instrument  it  is  cap- 
able of  becoming.  Often  one  is  tempted  to 
stop  half-way;  to  develop  the  voice  just  suf- 
ficiently to  pass  muster  and  secure  engage- 
ments, but  this  seems  most  short-sighted. 
The  time  is  sure  to  come  sometime  when  the 
serious  worker  feels  keenly  the  handicap  of  a 
half -trained  voice;  when  he  realizes  that,  be- 
cause of  his  early  neglect  of  this  vital  part  of 
his  equipment,  he  is  unable  to  reach  the  posi- 
tion to  which  his  other  proved  qualities  entitle 
him. 

No  matter  how  much  we  know  about  the 
art  of  acting,  we  must  depend  most  of  all 
^  upon  our  voice  to  express  it  to  others.  It 
is  our  point  of  contact  with  the  people  who 
give  us  our  rating  as  an  artist.  That  is  why 
it  seems  so  strange  that  the  study  of  proper 
voice  production  is  so  ignored  by  actors  of 


THE  VOICE  45 

the  present.  In  the  days  of  Kemble,  Kean, 
Macready,  Phelps,  Edwin  Forrest,  and  the 
others  it  was  not  so;  the  training  of  the 
voice  was  given  first  consideration.  Those 
old  giants  realized  that  they  must  depend 
upon  their  voice  to  carry  them  to  greatness; 
they  realized,  from  what  they  saw  others  do, 
that  wonders  could  be  accomplished  by  train- 
ing; they  devoted  themselves  to  this  great 
primary  as  a  matter  of  course.  I  once  saw 
Samuel  Phelps  play  Wolsey  and,  on  another 
occasion,  Malvolio.  It  was  a  good  many 
years  ago,  but  I  remember  most  vividly  the 
ease  with  which  his  splendid  voice  carried 
^very  syllable  of  those  exacting  parts  to  every 
part  of  the  theater.  It  is  the  memory  of  his 
thoroughly  satisfying  voice  which  remains 
with  me;  it  was  a  pleasure  merely  to  listen 
to  him;  and  I  am  sure  his  mastery  was  only 
gained  by  hard  study  and  hard  work,  his 
voice  was  pleasing  and  powerful  and  moving 
because  his  use  of  it  was  governed  by  the 
laws  of  the  technique  he  had  learned  step 
by  step. 


46  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

It  may  be  that  one  reason  young  actors  of 
the  present  shy  at  the  cultivation  of  their 
voices  is  because  of  the  striving  for  reahsm 
and  naturalness  which  characterizes  so  much 
of  what  we  do  in  the  theater  today.  We 
are  likely  to  hear  a  great  deal  more  about  con- 
cealing our  art  than  about  the  art  we  are  to 
conceal.  The  alert  young  "  modern  "  apostle 
of  realism  and  naturalness  has  in  mind  the 
sonorous  tones  and  studied  utterance  of  the 
actors  of  the  Old  School,  and  imagines  that 
to  be  the  dreadful  result  of  any  serious  voice 
training.  But  I  think  this  idea  is  due  to  a 
confusion  of  values — albeit  a  very  natural 
confusion.  I  do  not  think  the  old  actors 
of  my  youth  went  too  far  with  their  study, 
rather  they  did  not  go  far  enough.  Having 
spent  hard  years  to  learn  how  to  speak 
excellently,  they  saw  no  reason  for  disguis- 
ing their  "  elocution,"  they  were  more  in- 
clined to  display  it  with  pride.  They  re- 
garded it  more  as  a  virtue  than  a  fault  to 
speak  ponderously  and  precisely.  They  sin- 
cerely thought,   too,   that   upon  their  shoul- 


THE  VOICE  47 

ders  rested  the  burden  of  upholding  the  dig- 
nity and  beauty  of  the  Enghsh  language; 
this  was  not  a  pose  with  them,  they  took  it 
quite  seriously  and  labored  most  conscien- 
tiously at  their  task.  On  the  street,  or  in 
the  club,  or  in  the  shop  the  finished  thespian 
of  those  days  was  always  the  actor  with  the 
trained  voice,  he  could  not  be  mistaken.  But 
it  is  for  us  of  the  present  to  go  further 
than  they  thought  necessary.  It  is  for  us  to 
learn  all  they  knew  of  voice  production,  and 
correct  intonation  and  inflection,  but  learn 
also  how  to  make  it  all  seem  perfectly  ef- 
fortless and  natural. 

In  the  reaction  from  the  old  school  way 
of  doing  things  it  has  become  rather  the  fash- 
ion to  despise  the  study  of  elocution  alto- 
gether; but  there  is  no  doubt  in  my  mind 
that  it  is  still  essential  for  the  man  or  woman 
whose  life-work  is  acting.  Stage  effects  do 
not  come  by  chance,  they  are  the  result  of 
studied  effort.  If  an  actor  is  to  repeat  night 
after  night  the  effect  that  has  once  won 
applause,   he   must   know   how   he   got    the 


48  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

effect  in  the  first  place,  and  he  must  know 
the  technical  principles  that  underlie  what  he 
did.    Surely  that  can  only  come  by  study. 

If  the  actor  in  vaudeville  were  as  lax  as 
the  actor  in  the  regular  theater,  he  would  be 
out  of  a  job  in  a  short  time.  Vaudeville 
acting  is  a  highly  specialized  form  of  enter- 
tainment ;  and  success  in  it  comes  only  to  those 
who  have  schooled  themselves  thoroughly  in 
its  peculiar  technique.  For  the  twenty  min- 
utes or  so  they  are  on  the  stage  in  vaude- 
ville, the  entertainers  must  be  well-nigh  tech- 
nically perfect.  Consequently  it  is  on  the 
vaudeville  stage  that  we  see  what  really  can 
be  accomplished  by  voice  training;  it  is  there, 
regrettably  enough,  that  we  are  more  likely 
to  find  voices  that  are  really  trained.  Forbes- 
Robertson  has  been  greatly  admired  for  his 
splendid  voice — and  justly  so — but  I  do  not 
believe  it  is  as  good  an  instrument  as,  for 
example,  Harry  Lauder's.  And  I  believe 
one  of  the  biggest  factors  in  Harry  Lauder's 
success  is  the  consummate  skill  with  which 
he  is  able  to  use  his  voice.    He  gives  the  im- 


THE  VOICE  49 

pression  of  perfect  spontaneity,  perfect  ease, 
he  appears  to  be  "just  talking";  but  in  any- 
given  performance  he  uses  an  astonishing 
range  of  voice.  The  delectable,  winning  in- 
flections which  somehow  cajole  and  stroke 
an  audience  into  just  the  warm  mood  he 
wishes  are  not,  I  venture  to  say,  so  unstudied 
as  they  seem.  Night  after  night  he  deftly 
touches  the  identical  notes  so  expertly  and 
easily  that  it  all  seems  the  naive,  almost  ac- 
cidental charm,  of  a  delightful  personality. 
While  all  this  admirable  technique  may  be 
second  nature  to  him  now,  I  venture  to  say 
it  came  at  the  beginning  only  as  the  result  of 
careful  and  rigid  training.  Nature  had  given 
him  a  pleasing  and  powerful  voice, — whose 
power  is  guided  so  well  that  few  people  real- 
ize how  great  it  is — but  Lauder  did  not  rest 
on  what  nature  had  done  for  him,  he  did 
not  neglect  the  perfecting  of  his  voice,  the 
control  of  it.  To  be  endowed  with  natural 
ability  is  one  thing,  to  be  able  to  use  it  prop- 
erly is  another.  I  have  seen  many  a  man 
who   lacked   the   natural   advantages   of  his 


50  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

competitors  distance  them  by  dint  of  his  hard 
work. 
/  Charles  Kean,  for  example,  according  to 
!  my  father,  had  a  sort  of  chronic  nasal  cold. 
At  the  cost  of  enormous  effort  he  was  able 
to  overcome  it  on  the  stage.  But  in  his 
everyday  life,  when  there  was  no  need  for 
his  speaking  carefully,  he  always  sounded  like 
a  man  with  hay  fever.  He  was  playing 
Richard  III  once  in  golden  armor.  He  was 
standing  in  the  wings  waiting  for  his  cue, 
and  turning  to  his  wife  said,  "  By  dear,  this 
arbor  is  too  heavy  for  addything.  I  really 
bust  have  a  suit  of  golded  leather  bade." 
His  cue  came,  and  he  stepped  on  the  stage 
\  and  spoke  his  lines  with  perfect  clearness.  It 
was  training;  and  I  imagine  that  Kean  had 
passed  any  number  of  other  men  in  his  youth 
who  had  been  far  more  generously  dealt  with 
by  nature.  I 

Totcs  are  most  important,  I  think;  and 
tones  can  be  cultivated,  indeed  they  may  be 
said  to  be  the  result  of  cultivation  in  the  case 
of  most  actors;  nature  gave  them  the  instru- 


THE  VOICE  51 

merit  on  which  they  play,  but  she  did  not  teach 
them  how  to  play  it.  I  beheve  if  anyone  stops 
and  thinks  of  the  moments  when  he  has  been 
most  deeply  stirred  in  the  theater  he  will  be 
surprised  to  find  how  often  the  effect  had  to 
do  with  the  tone  of  the  actor's  voice.  It  is 
the  tone  of  the  voice,  more  often  than  any- 
thing else,  which  makes  a  line  powerful  and! 
moving  on  the  stage;  I  am  sure  this  has  been; 
true  in  my  experience.  Macready,  by  con- 
centrating and  practising  on  the  one  word 
"murder,"  was  finally  able  to  speak  it  so 
that  the  audience  shuddered  at  the  mere  sound 
he  was  able  to  give  the  two  syllables.  I 
have  heard  an  actor  in  the  part  of  the  ghost 
in  Hamlet  give  the  lines, 

**I  could  a  tale  unfold,  whose  lightest  word 
Would  harrow  up  thy  soul,  freeze  thy  young  blood  .  .  . 

in  such  a  way  that  the  word  "  freeze  "  did 
freeze  my  young  blood  and  send  chills  down 
my  youthful  spine  every  time  I  listened  to 
him. 

Range  is  one  of  the  essentials  also.     An 


52  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

actor  should  be  able  to  speak  in  about  two 
octaves,  startling  as  this  may  sound.  It  is 
not  necessary,  of  course,  in  small  parts;  but 
the  strain  on  the  voice  of  holding  up  a  heavy 
leading  part  through  an  entire  evening  is 
much  greater  than  we  may  realize  when  list- 
ening to  another  do  it.  To  be  able  to  carry 
such  a  part  without  fatigue  the  voice  must 
have  flexibility;  a  few  notes  cannot  stand 
the  long  pressure.  The  trained  voice  hus- 
bands itself  by  distributing  the  strain. 

One  learns  to  keep  plenty  of  air  in  the 
lungs,  and  to  be  sparing  of  breath.  It  is 
not  well  to  shout  the  roof  off  of  the  theater, 
simply  because  one  is  able  to  do  it.  Such 
a  thing  is  only  disagreeable  to  an  audience. 
I  have  heard  people  say  of  a  certain  actor 
that  they  were  sure  they  would  take  great 
enjoyment  in  his  acting  if  he  did  not  make 
so  much  noise  about  it.  I  am  sure  that 
many  people  stayed  away  from  this  man's 
performances  because  his  shouting  was  so  ir- 
ritating to  them,  yet  he  very  possibly  sup- 
posed that  he  was  displaying  great  power. 


THE  VOICE  53 

He  had  a  strong  voice,  and  had  lost  sight  of 
the  fact  that  the  portrayal  of  strong  emotion 
was  not  at  all  a  question  of  lung  power.  The 
trained  voice  can  always  carry  as  far  as  that 
of  the  shouter,  and  it  is  always  much  more 
moving. 

Broadly  speaking  there  are  two  primary 
tones  from  which  one  shades  into  the  mani- 
fold variety  of  which  the  human  voice  is 
capable.  These  two  are  the  sonorous  and  the 
metallic.  Both  should  be  cultivated,  I  be- 
lieve. Certain  kinds  of  matter  lend  them- 
selves to  the  deep,  easy,  sonorous  treatment, 
the  lines  may  and  should  be  dwelt  upon; 
other  matter — in  itself,  perhaps,  rather  dull 
— can  often  be  carried  by  the  sharp,  incisive, 
stimulating  way  of  speaking  which  the  me- 
tallic quality  of  voice  supplies.  The  mere 
ring  and  tang  of  the  voice  may  stir  the  au- 
dience and  keep  them  alert.  Moments  of 
pathos  may  best  be  given  in  the  softer  tones 
which  are  derived  from  the  sonorous.  Sar- 
casm, bitterness,  and  the  like  lend  themselves 
to  the  tones  whose  primary  is  the  metallic. 


54  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

In  big  parts  both  varieties  are  needed;  and  I 
think  every  actor  should  cultivate  them.  Our 
difficulty  of  defining  and  cataloguing,  and 
the  apparent  futility  and  folly  of  attempting 
to  do  it,  presents  itself  again,  I  realize  fully, 
in  such  a  discussion  as  this.  But  it  is  only 
by  means  of  some  such  bald  statement,  that 
we  are  able  to  glimpse  the  principles  which 
are  underneath  what  we  do.  Let  us  realize 
that  in  such  an  effort  to  put  into  concrete 
form  what  is  of  necessity  so  ephemeral  we 
are  only  striving  to  suggest,  not  define. 

The  adroit  husbanding  of  his  energies 
which  a  man  learns  by  giving  serious  at- 
tention to  the  cultivation  of  his  voice  en- 
ables him  to  adjust  his  abilities  to  the  re- 
quirements of  exacting  parts.  A  good  actor's 
voice  may  seem  to  rise  in  power  and  in- 
tensity in  the  moments  of  stress,  but  usually 
it  is  only  a  seeming  rise.  He  knows  his 
limitations  and  he  begins  the  impassioned 
speech  at  a  low  pitch.  He  knows  how  to 
make  his  low  tones  carry  effectively,  he  is 
able  to  rest  his  lungs  even  in  the  heat  of  the 


THE  VOICE  55 

greatest  climax.  Then,  in  comparison,  he 
seems  to  be  soaring  in  the  crises.  He  has 
learned  to  pause  and  breathe  even  when  he 
seems  to  be  talking  at  top  speed.  Let  us 
suppose  a  man  is  to  burst  into  the  room  and 
announce,  "  The  factory  is  in  flames,  they'll 
all  be  killed!  "  He  has  presumably  run  all 
the  way  from  the  fire,  he  is  greatly  excited, 
quite  out  of  breath,  and  the  words  come 
tumbling  out.  But  they  do  not  actually 
come  tumbling  out.  He  says,  "  The  factory 
.  .  .  (pointing  and  gasping)  ...  in  flames 
.  .  .  (gasp)  .  .  .  they'll  all  .  .  .  (swallow) 
...  be  killed!  "  He  has  seemed  to  pour  out 
the  words  in  a  rush,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
he  has  taken  as  much  time,  and  breathed  as 
regularly  as  if  he  had  sat  calmly  in  a  chair 
with  his  hat  on  his  knees  and  made  the  an- 
nouncement with  the  utmost  deliberation.  It 
seems  over-fastidious  to  regard  such  methods 
as  tricky,  they  are  a  part  of  that  legitimate 
technique  of  which  we  must  avail  ourselves  in 
simulating — not  photographing — reality. 
Very  often,  however,  it  is  hard  to  under- 


56  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

stand  an  actor  because  his  enunciation,  rather 
than  his  voice,  is  at  fault.  Certainly  distinct 
utterance  is  one  of  the  prime  requisites;  and 
it  also  is  something  which  may  be  gained  by 
simple  practice.  After  all  it  is  one  of  the 
simplest  things  in  the  world  to  learn  to  speak 
correctly,  to  take  thought  and  begin  each 
word  properly  and  end  each  word  properly; 
and  it  is  such  a  gratifying  relief  to  an  audi- 
ence if  they  can  hear,  without  straining, 
everything  an  actor  says.  A  little  attention 
to  one's  everyday  conversation  will  often  work 
wonders.  If  one  schools  himself  for  a  while 
to  speak  a  little  more  slowly,  and  to  give, 
each  syllable  its  due,  it  is  surprising  how 
naturally  and  rapidly  his  speech  will  clarify. 
If  we  take  care  of  the  consonants  the  vowels 
will  take  care  of  themselves,;  though  we  sound 
stilted  and  pedantic  to  ourselves  at  first, 
this  passes,  and  the  habit  of  distinct  speaking 
becomes  a  fixed  one,  and  is  as  hard  as  any 
habit  to  break.  While  we  are  forming  the 
habit,  too,  we  sound  much  more  conspicuous 
to  ourselves  than  we  do  to  anyone  else.    Ellen 


THE  VOICE  57 

Terry  is  one  of  the  best  speakers  I  have 
ever  heard,  every  syllable  is  clean-cut  and 
clear,  yet  I  do  not  believe  anyone  would  ever 
accuse  her  of  speaking  primly  or  unnaturally. 
I  do  not  imagine  her  splendid  enunciation 
is  a  chance  thing;  I  have  no  doubt  she  culti- 
vated it  until  it  became  second  nature  to  her. 
The  ability  to  laugh  in  an  infectious  way 
on  the  stage  is  another  important  asset.  I 
have  often  heard  actors  lament  the  fact  that 
they  did  not  have  a  good  laugh;  but  most  of 
us  would  like  to  have  many  things  without 
paying  for  them.  Anyone  can  train  himself 
to  laugh  in  a  variety  of  ways  if  he  first  has  a 
control  over  his  voice,  and  is  able  to  make  it 
do  his  bidding.  There  are  several  laughing 
effects  on  the  phonograph  which  would  serve 
as  models,  not  to  be  slavishly  imitated,  but 
used  as  guide  posts.  Such  ejaculations  as 
those  of  anger,  horror,  grief,  and  sympathy 
should  be  studied  while  one  is  in  a  malleable 
state,  before  bad  habits  and  false  manner- 
isms are  acquired.  In  the  beginning  we  tend 
to  take  life  as  our  model,  later  we  are  apt 


58  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

to  put  our  reliance  on  the  devices  and  tricks 
of  others — which,  if  we  acquire  them  so, 
can  never  be  anything  but  devices  and  tricks 
for  us.  I  would  suggest  that  a  person  start 
by  finding  out  how  he  himself  expresses  the 
various  emotions,  what  ejaculations  come 
most  naturally  to  him,  and  then  that  he  try 
to  express  them  accurately  in  his  own  way 
and  at  will,  and  that  he  make  sure  he  is  able 
to  convey  what  he  feels  to  others. 

We  may  say,  then,  that  our  purpose  is  not 
to  speak  naturally  on  the  stage  at  all,  but 
If  to  make  people  think  we  are  speaking  natu- 
rally, and  that  this  comes  as  the  result 
of  study  and  hard  work.  With  it  all,  how- 
ever, we  should  not  lose  sight  of  the  danger 
which  frightens  so  many  young  actors  away 
from  the  study  of  voice  cultivation  altogether: 
the  danger  of  falling  in  love  with  our  voice. 
Henry  Irving  once  said,  "  What  a  wonderful 
actor  AVenman  would  be  if  he  didn't  know 
he'd  got  a  voice."  Certainly  there  is  a  great 
danger  of  becoming  infatuated  with  our 
faultless  diction,  of  taking  excessive  pride  in 


THE  VOICE  59 

it,  and  of  showing  it  off  to  the  audience. 
No  good  actor  ever  does  that.  He  never  lets 
the  audience  think  he  is  speaking  beautifully, 
only  that  he  is  speaking  naturally  and  clearly. 
If,  when  the  audience  is  leaving  the  theater, 
the  comments  are  mostly  in  praise  of  the  star's 
voice,  there  has  been  something  wrong  with 
his  performance.  Never  have  I  heard  Harry 
Lauder's  voice  praised,  all  the  praise  has 
been  for  his  perfect  work.  An  actor  can  be- 
come the  slave  of  his  voice,  whereas  it  should 
be  his  slave.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  taste  in 
using  one's  technical  skill;  the  best-dressed 
woman  is  the  one  who  arranges  her  toilet 
so  that  we  notice  her  beauty  and  not  her 
gown. 

It  would  seem  that  the  wisest  plan  is  to 
steer  a  middle  course  between  that  of  the 
old  actors  who  proudly  displayed  the  me- 
chanics of  their  art  by  constantly  calHng 
attention  to  their  clear  speech  and  tones,  and 
that  of  the  new  actor  who  is  apt  to  disdain 
the  cultivation  of  speech  and  tones  altogether. 
Of  the  two,  however,  the  latter  is  the  more 


60  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

profitless;  the  road  to  Stardom  is  strewn  with 
the  bones  of  many  clever  people  who,  in  the 
flush  of  easy  success  easily  and  early  won, 
scorned  the  humble  drudgery  of  sound  tech- 
nique. But  perhaps  a  word  of  caution 
should  be  added.  The  stage  proper,  during 
the  performance,  is  not  the  place  for  experi- 
menting and  practising;  that  should,  by  all 
means,  be  left  in  the  study  when  one  goes  on 
for  a  scene.  We  should  forget  our  voice, 
and  hands,  and  feet  while  on  the  stage,  and 
fix  the  whole  attention  on  living  the  char- 
acter we  may  be  playing.  The  true  actor 
can  analyze  his  part  and  study  its  separate 
requirements;  but,  when  the  time  comes,  he 
can  blend  all  into  an  indivisible  whole.  The 
theater,  when  filled  with  an  audience,  is  a 
place  of  illusion ;  and  the  actor  who  is  thinking 
of  the  mechanics  of  his  work  is  shattering 
illusion  for  himself  and  for  those  who  are 
watching  him. 


CHAPTER  IV 

GETTING  INSIDE  ONE'S  PART 

Learning  Words  Before  We  Know  Their  Meaning — 
Study  the  Character  for  Light  on  the  Words,  Not 
the  Words  for  Light  on  the  Character — We  Should 
Know  Our  Part's  Relation  to  the  Whole— The  Es- 
sence of  Illusory  Impersonation — Dissolving  Shy- 
lock  into  His  Component  Parts — How  Any  Character 
Can  Be  Made  to  Reveal  Itself  from  a  Study  of  the 
Lines — The  Second  Step:  Becoming  a  Shylock — The 
Third  Step:  Thinking  out  Shylock  in  Wall  Street 
Terms — The  Last  Step:  Associating  Our  New  Self 
with  the  Play  as  a  Whole — This  Formula  Applies  to 
Plays  Modern  and  Classical. 

THE  quality  of  the  performance  we  ulti- 
mately give  depends,  to  a  very  great 
extent,  upon  the  method  we  use  in  get- 
ting into  the  character  from  the  beginning. 
In  this,  as  in  practically  everything  in  our 
craft,  I  believe  in  reducing  the  problem  to 
its  simplest  terms,  in  getting  down  to  rock- 
bottom  truths.  We  are  safe  in  saying  that  an 
actor  should  analyze  the  character  of  every 

61 


62  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

man  he  plays  until  the  man,  pure  and  simple, 
stands  before  him.  It  is  a  mistake — and  a 
common  one — to  learn  the  words  of  the 
character  before  we  know  why  he  speaks 
them,  and  why  he  would  not  speak  any 
others.  Over  and  over  again,  in  the  past,  I 
have  fallen  into  the  error  of  judging  the 
words  on  their  face  value,  and  of  learning 
them  before  I  had  the  remotest  idea  of  the 
man  who  spoke  them.  I  have  memorized 
the  lines,  added  to  them  a  certain  idealization 
of  my  own,  and  have  taken  pleasure  in  spout- 
ing them  for  the  sake  of  their  own  telling 
qualities,  rather  than  as  a  means  of  revealing 
the  nature  of  the  man  who  was  supposed  to 
be  speaking  them.  Later,  when  the  inevi- 
table inconsistencies  of  my  reading  became 
clear,  I  have  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in 
shaking  myself  free  from  the  first  impres- 
sions, gained  merely  because  I  had  begun  at 
the  wrong  end. 

I  remember  a  play  in  which  I  had  the  part 
of  an  old  family  servant.  I  had  been  with 
the  family  for  most  of  my  life,  and  though 


GETTING  INSIDE  ONE'S  PART         63 

the  present  head  of  it  was  a  dissolute  incom- 
petent, I  had  a  deep  loyalty  and  even  affec- 
tion for  him,  because  of  his  forebears.  In  a 
fit  of  petulance  he  threatens  to  discharge  me. 
Then  I  have  a  long  speech  in  which  I  tell 
him  of  the  years  when  I  served  his  father  and 
his  grandfather  before  him.  I  speak  of  the 
great  industry  they  built  up,  of  what  strong 
men  they  were,  and  of  how  he  is  doing  his 
best  to  tear  down  what  they  had  left  in  his 
trust.  My  first  inchnation  was  to  give  a 
smashing  delivery  of  this  speech,  to  assail 
him  with  my  eloquence;  but  when  I  analyzed 
the  part,  I  found  that  this  was  wrong.  I 
found  that,  to  be  in  key,  the  lines  had  to  be 
given  more  in  sorrow  than  censure,  almost 
apologetically.  A  study  of  the  lines,  for 
themselves,  would  not  have  revealed  this;  I 
found  it  only  after  studying  the  lines  for  light 
on  the  nature  of  the  man  who  spoke  them. 

We  should  have  some  notion  of  the  entire 
play,  before  we  begin  the  study  of  our  own 
part.  If  it  is  impossible  to  read  the  play,  in 
its  entirety,  we  should  at  least  hear  it  read; 


64  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

and  the  script  we  study  should  contain  the 
whole  of  the  scenes  in  which  we  have  a  share. 
Managers,  however,  have  a  way  of  giving  the 
actor  a  typed  copy  of  his  part  from  which 
it  is  next  to  impossible  for  him  to  tell  whether 
he  is  supposed  to  be  a  taxicab  driver  or  a 
clergyman.  His  own  lines  are  there,  but 
those  of  the  other  actors  to  whom  he  must 
speak  and  reply  are  scantily  represented  by 
cues — which  consist  sometimes  of  as  many  as 
four  words,  and  sometimes  of  one  or  two. 
In  the  part  I  had  in  The  Masquerader  these 
are  some  of  the  cues  I  was  given  to  speak  on: 

Tchk,  tchk,  tchk ! 


Yes  sir. 

Parliament  yesterday. 

His  nerves,  ma'am. 

she  almost  did. 

Wake  up,  sir.     Your  wife  is  here. 

Ugh ! 

A  shave  and  fresh  linen  might  improve  appearances. 

Oh! 

Your  order  for  the  steel  billets. 

Ha,  ha! 

Oh,  God! 

With   a    "  part "   of   this   kind,   the   actor 


GETTING  INSIDE  ONE'S  PART         65 

gets  a  knowledge  of  the  words  before  he  has 
any  idea  of  what  they  are  all  about,  before 
he  has  any  idea  of  the  character  of  the  man 
he  is  to  portray.  And  the  man,  the  char- 
acter, should  come  first,  then  his  thoughts, 
then  his  words.  The  words  are  the  last  thing 
to  be  considered.  They  are  the  roof  of  the 
structure  one  builds,  and  the  solid  foundation, 
and  the  walls,  should  come  first.  For  we 
must  know,  not  only  those  thoughts  the  char- 
acter expresses,  but  also  we  must  know  the 
thoughts  he  does  not  express.  In  life,  we 
put  into  words  but  a  small  fraction  of  the 
thoughts  which  pass  through  our  minds  in 
the  course  of  the  conversation.  While  the 
other  man  is  talking,  we  are  turning  over  in 
our  brain  a  great  many  things  which  we 
might  reply,  and  we  speak  only  of  those 
which  seem  to  fit  the  occasion  best.  On 
the  stage,  if  our  impersonation  is  to  be  life- 
like, we  must  know  the  man  we  are  playing 
well  enough  to  do  the  same.  I  regard  this 
as  the  very  essence  of  illusory  impersonation; 
only  thus  can  we  gain  depth,  only  thus  can 


66  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

we  impart  the  breath  of  hfe  to  our  creation. 
If  the  lines  we  speak  represent  the  total  of 
our  knowledge  of  the  part  we  can  only  speak 
as  a  parrot,  our  portrait  can  only  be  a  sil- 
houette. 

To  my  mind  the  logical  way  to  build  up  a 
character  portrayal  is  first  to  get  a  clear  and 
firm  knowledge  of  the  man,  and  to  make  his 
thoughts  my  own;  for  it  seems  to  me  if  we 
are  to  learn  the  words  intelligently,  we  must 
know  the  thought  that  generates  them,  and 
to  know  the  thought  that  generates  them,  we 
must  know  the  character  of  the  person  who 
generates  the  thoughts.  Perhaps  the  best  way 
to  make  clear  what  I  mean  is  to  take  a 
character  and  analyze  it,  to  take  him  into 
our  mental  laboratory  and  dissolve  him  into 
his  component  parts,  which  is  what  we  should 
always  do  with  any  part. 

Let  us  take  Shylock  from  The  Merchant 
of  Venice  and  see  if,  by  studying  the  lines  he 
speaks,  we  can  realize  the  author's  concep- 
tion of  the  character.  I  am  led  to  choose 
Shylock  because  Shakespeare  is  accessible  to 


GETTING  INSIDE  ONE'S  PART         67 

everyone,  while  this  might  not  be  true  in  the 
ease  of  a  modern  play.  Also,  since  we  have 
to  deal  with  a  representative  of  another  time 
and  country,  and  with  Ehzabethan  blank 
verse,  the  aspects  of  the  problem  are  magni- 
fied somewhat,  we  get  them  on  a  somewhat 
larger  scale,  in  clearer  relief.  But  the  prin- 
ciples we  follow  and  the  methods  we  use 
are  quite  as  applicable  to  the  study  of  a 
present-day  character.  There  is  a  danger, 
however,  in  using  so  well-known  a  character 
because  tradition  is  liable  to  play  a  part  in 
our  analysis.  Shy  lock  has  often  been  played 
— and  by  great  actors — as  a  man  full  of  dig- 
nity, and  a  great  Jew;  and  one's  natural 
inclination  is  to  follow  in  their  footsteps.  But 
the  thing  we  should  do  with  Shylock,  or  with 
any  character  new  or  old,  is  to  follow  the 
author's  reasoning  with  an  unprejudiced 
mind,  and  allow  the  character  to  expand 
before  us  as  the  author  wrote  him,  and  not 
take  our  interpretation  second-hand  from 
anybody. 

In  the  beginning  Shylock  enters  with  Bas- 


68  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

sanio.  The  dialogue  goes  to  show,  at  first, 
that  Shylock  is  a  shrewd  business  man,  and 
that  he  has  an  undisguised  hate  of  the  Chris- 
tian. When  he  is  invited  to  dinner  to  meet 
Antonio,  he  rephes  that  he  will  buy  and  sell 
with  a  Christian,  but  that  he  will  not  drink 
or  pray  with  one.  Then  follows  his  soliloquy. 
Now  in  a  soliloquy  there  is  no  hidden  mean- 
ing. The  words  stand  for  the  absolute  truth, 
their  face  value  is  their  real  value.  It  is 
used  by  the  author  as  a  means  of  quick  expo- 
sition of  character,  it  is  a  convention  granted 
the  author  for  putting  into  words  the 
thoughts  of  his  character.  And  I  have  actu- 
ally heard  actors  say..  "  Yes,  this  is  what  he 
says,  but  he  doesn't  mean  it."  In  other 
words  this  is  what  he  says  to  himself,  what 
he  is  thinking,  but  it  isn't  really  what  he  says 
to  himself  or  thinks!  In  his  soliloquy,  then, 
Shylock  says: 

"  How  like  a  fawning  publican  he  looks ! 
I  hate  him  for  he  is  a  Christian, 
But  more  for  that,  in  low  simplicity, 
He  lends  out  money  gratis  and  brings  down 
The  rate  of  usance  here  with  us  in  Venice." 


GETTING  INSIDE  ONE'S  PART         69 

In  the  first  line,  "  How  like  a  fawning  pub- 
lican he  looks,"  we  get  a  glimpse  of  Shy- 
lock's  mind.  We  know  that  Antonio  is  the 
very  antithesis  of  a  "  fawning  publican," 
since  we  have  learned  in  an  earlier  scene  that 
he  is  a  fine  fellow,  generous  to  a  fault.  Thus 
at  once  we  see  that  Shy  lock's  judgment  is 
distorted,  at  least  so  far  as  Antonio  is  con- 
cerned. The  next  two  lines  show  that  Shy- 
lock  values  money  more  highly  than  he  does 
his  religion.  The  fact  that  Antonio  is  a 
Christian  is  bad  enough,  but  his  methods  of 
interfering  with  Shylock's  business  of  piling 
up  the  ducats  makes  him,  in  the  old  Jew's 
eyes,  much  more  of  a  reprobate. 

The  lines, 

**  If  I  can  catch  him  once  upon  the  hip 
I  will  feed  fat  the  ancient  grudge  I  bear  him/* 

speak  eloquently  of  Shylock's  vengeful  and 
brooding  disposition. 

"  He  hates  our  sacred  nation ;  and  he  rails 
E'en  there  where  merchants  most  do  congregate, 
On  me,  my  bargains^  and  my  well-won  thrift. 
Which  he  calls  interest.     Cursed  be  my  tribe 
If  I  forgive  him." 


70  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

In  this  Shakespeare,  like  the  painstaking 
workman  he  is,  dehberately  underlines  the 
idea  that  Shylock's  greed  is  a  greater  force 
in  his  nature  than  his  religion.  He  starts 
with,  "  he  hates  our  sacred  nation,"  but 
his  penurious  mind  gets  back  promptly  to 
the  deeper  grievance:  Antonio  rails  against 
his  "  well- won  thrift,"  and  against  his 
"  bargains."  We  feel  that  the  oath,  "  cursed 
be  my  tribe  if  I  forgive  him,"  is  torn  from 
him,  not  because  Shylock  hates  Antonio  as 
a  Christian  but  as  a  business  enemy.  It 
seems  to  me  that  Shakespeare  has  been  most 
careful  to  make  this  clear,  and  yet  how  often 
has  he  been  misunderstood.  Thus,  in  the  first 
few  lines,  we  get  a  clear  thumb-nail  sketch 
of  Shylock's  character,  and  we  know  some- 
thing of  his  relation  to  the  rest  of  the 
play. 

Shylock  is  shown  to  us  thus  far  as  a  cun- 
ning, avaricious,  malignant  man;  and  we 
find,  as  the  play  proceeds,  that  this  prelimi- 
nary outline  is  carefully  filled  in.  His  own 
daughter,     Jessica,     confides     to     Launcelot 


GETTING  INSIDE  ONE'S  PART         71 

Gobbo  that  her  home  is  a  Hell.  Later  she 
tells  how  Shylock  has  declared  that  he  would 
rather  have  Antonio's  flesh  than  twenty  times 
the  value  of  the  sum  owed  him.  Shakespeare 
misses  no  opportunity  to  drive  home  the 
cruelty  and  greed  of  Shylock's  nature.  When 
the  old  rascal  learns  of  his  daughter's  treach- 
ery; and  when  he  expresses  love  for  his  dead 
wife,  Leah,  we  are  inclined  to  have  a  little 
compassion;  but  his  greed  is  likely  to  turn 
our  compassion  to  disgust. 
He  says, 

"  Go,  Tubal,  fee  me  an  officer,  bespeak  him  a  fort- 
night before.  I'll  have  the  heart  of  him  if  he  forfeit, 
for  were  he  out  of  Venice  I  can  make  what  merchandise 
I  will." 

In  other  words,  he  means  to  kill  Antonio, 
not  for  the  sake  of  religion,  but  that  he  may 
be  unhampered  in  his  commercial  opera- 
tions. 

To  my  mind  this  is  the  first  step  in  the 
study  of  a  part  like  Shylock,  classic  or  mod- 
ern. From  a  study  of  the  lines  themselves  we 
get  the  primaries  of  his  nature  in  hand.    We 


72  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

find  that  he  is  a  certain  kind  of  a  man,  with 
whom  certain  considerations  will  always  come 
first.  And  if  the  man  we  happen  to  be 
playing  is  a  Wall  Street  magnate,  or  a 
bloated  politician,  or  a  crusty  old  land-grab- 
bing rural  tyrant,  we  can  get  at  the  primaries 
of  his  nature  in  this  way. 

Then,  being  convinced  that  Shylock  is  an 
avaricious,  revengeful  old  usurer,  the  next 
step  is  to  get  inside  him,  to  become  a  Shylock. 
In  doing  this  I  believe  in  fixing  my  mind 
on  the  evil  qualities  in  my  own  nature,  in 
locking  up  and  forgetting  the  good.  Here 
again  it  is  easier  for  me,  always,  to  go  back 
to  primary  things.  When  I  was  a  youngster, 
I  remember,  there  was  a  boy  I  did  not  like. 
I  saw  him  one  day  leaning  peacefully  against 
a  tree ;  and  I  remember  the  cold-blooded  way 
in  which  I  weighed  the  possibilities  of  slip- 
ping up  behind  him  and  kicking  him,  and 
making  my  escape.  I  daresay  anyone  can 
recall  such  moments;  and  if  one  fixes  his 
mind  on  them,  he  can  bring  to  the  surface 
those  old  primitive  instincts  which  convention 


GETTING  INSIDE  ONE'S  PART         73 

has  since  tended  to  soften  and  iron  out.  If 
we  concentrate  on  such  moods  for  a  time, 
it  is  amazing  how  clear  the  motives  and  the 
psychology  of  a  Shylock  may  become.  By 
exerting  the  will  we  can  grasp  the  conception 
of  such  a  nature  and  hold  it  firmly  in  mind; 
and  the  more  clearly  we  grasp  it,  and  the 
more  firmly  we  hold  it,  the  better  will  be  the 
performance  we  shall  ultimately  give;  for 
this  is  the  foundation  and  framework  of  the 
structure  we  are  building,  and  if  we  are  un- 
certain and  wavering  here  the  finished  work 
cannot  be  right. 

As  a  third  step  we  can  forget  that  the 
man  we  are  studying  is  a  character  in  a  play. 
We  can  get  him  out  of  the  world  of  fiction 
and  into  the  real  world  about  us;  we  can 
think  of  him  as  a  human  being  whom  we 
might  meet  in  the  street.  In  the  case  of 
Shylock  I  should  forget  his  medieval  costume, 
his  Elizabethan  speech,  forget  even  his  name. 
I  should  give  this  second  self  of  mine  a  new 
name;  I  should  call  myself  "  Stingy"  Smith, 
the  tightest   man   in   town.      People    shrug 


•74  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

when  I  pass  along  the  street,  I  am  used  to 
being  snubbed  and  insulted.  This  has  had  a 
natural  effect  upon  me;  I  am  soured,  I  hate 
them,  every  one  of  them.  I  take  a  bitter 
satisfaction  in  gloating  over  the  fact  that 
many  of  them  are  in  my  power.  I  have  lent 
many  dollars  to  them  (dollars,  not  ducats) ; 
and  I  hold  mortgages  on  much  of  their  prop- 
erty which  I  could  foreclose  if  I  wished.  I 
try,  thus,  to  practise  thinking — above  all, 
thinking — and  walking,  and  gesticulating, 
smiling,  and  shrugging  as  such  a  man  would. 
Then,  from  the  book  of  the  play,  I  think  it 
is  a  good  plan  to  get  the  gist  of  the  con- 
versations in  which  Shylock  takes  part.  This 
is  not  the  time  to  study  the  words  as  they 
are  written;  but  to  read  them  over,  and  get 
their  general  trend,  then  I  should  attempt 
to  read  the  part  in  the  language  that  comes 
most  readily  to  my  lips. 

Let  us  suppose  I  have  called  Bassanio 
"  Brown."  "  Brown  "  has  asked  me  to  let 
him  have  $3,000.  Perhaps  we  should  read 
the  dialogue  something  hke  this: 


GETTING  INSIDE  ONE'S  PART  75 

You:     So  you  want  me  to  lend  you  three  thousand? 

Brown:     Yes,  for  ninety  days  or  so. 

You  (repeating,  that  there  may  be  no  mistake). 
Three  months. 

Brown:     Robinson  will  go  security  for  me. 

(The  name  Robinson  fills  you  with  hate,  but  you 
cheek  yourself.) 

You  (calmly) :  Robinson,  eh  ?  So  Robinson  will 
back  your  bilLf^ 

Brown  :     Right.     What  do  you  say  ? 

You  (with  a  tinge  of  sarcasm) :  Hm.  Your  friend 
Robinson  is  a  good  man. 

Brown:  He  certainly  is.  Do  you  know  anything 
against  him.'^ 

You  (hastily) :  Oh  no,  no,  no.  Lord  no,  not  in  the 
least!  I  simply  meant  that  his  credit's  good.  I 
meant  his  name  to  a  bill  should  satisfy  anyone.  But 
I'm  a  cautious  man.  I  go  slow.  Robinson  is  a 
shipper,  and  all  he's  got  is  in  his  ships.  They're 
likely  to  be  wrecked,  of  course.  Still,  I  think  I'll 
take  a  chance. 

I  think  it  will  pay  to  continue  this  through 
to  the  end.  It  may  seem  rather  an  indirect 
way  of  going  about  it,  but  I  am  sure  it  will 
be  found  that  the  idea  we  have  formed  of  the 
part  will  gain  in  vitahty  and  pliability,  and 
that  we  are  much  nearer  what  the  author  had 
in  mind.  For  we  have  again  been  simplify- 
ing.    We  have   been   transmuting  the  pre- 


76  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

pared  speeches  of  the  character  into  our  own 
simpler  vernacular,  and  his  emotions  have 
become  clearer  in  the  light  of  our  own  emo- 
tional experiences. 

The  last  step  in  this  preparation  is  to  get 
back  into  the  atmosphere  of  the  play,  to  as- 
sociate this  new  self  we  have  found  with 
the  time  and  place  and  the  other  people 
imagined  by  the  dramatist.  It  may  be  ar- 
gued that  this  sort  of  thing  may  be  necessary 
in  a  classical  play  but  is  superfluous  with  a 
character  of  present-day  life,  since  in  such 
a  play  the  language  is  natural  to  start  with. 
But  this,  of  course,  is  very  far  from  true. 
The  playwright  has  carefully  selected  the 
words  for  the  actor  to  say.  They  are  the 
words  which  unfold  the  story  as  the  author 
wishes  it  unfolded,  and  which  disclose  the 
character  in  the  way  he  thinks  compatible 
with  the  economy  of  the  play.  We  often 
compress  into  a  few  lines  what,  in  life, 
we  might  take  half  an  hour  to  say.  If 
three  or  four  people  are  talking  in  a  room, 
one  of  them  is  likely  to  monopolize  the  con- 


GETTING  INSIDE  ONE'S  PART         77 

versation  for  fifteen  or  twenty  minutes.  Then 
there  may  be  a  pause  of  many  minutes  before 
the  next  word  is  spoken.  That  is  natural 
dialogue,  but  imagine  such  a  scene  on  the 
stage!  So,  in  a  modern  part  as  well, 
we  must,  I  think,  disrobe  the  lines  of 
all  this  polish  and  arbitrary  arrangement 
and  dramatic  sequence,  just  as  we  de- 
prived Shylock  of  his  wig  and  cadenced 
verses. 

Surely  this  is  the  logical  way  to  build  up 
a  character  portrayal.  It  is  undoubtedly 
the  course  the  author  himself  had  to  follow. 
He  thought  of  the  man  first — long  before  he 
conceived  "  speeches  "  for  him.  Then  he  put 
down  words  for  his  new  creation,  but  in  rather 
crude  form.  Later  he  polished  them  into 
shape,  into  appropriate  prose  or  blank  verse 
as  the  case  may  be,  and  gave  them  to  us  as 
we  find  them  in  the  finished  play.  And  as 
the  author,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
stumbles  first  of  all  upon  the  crude  elements 
of  his  created  characters,  so  we  must  deliber- 
ately go   searching   for   them;    and,    having 


78  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

found  them,  we  must,  after  a  fashion,  re- 
assemble them  for  ourselves  if  our  work  is  to 
be  marked  with  confidence  and  grounded  in 
truth,  as  all  truly  artistic  work  must  be. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  EYE  AND  THE  HANDS 

"  Five-finger  Exercises  "  Necessary  for  the  Actor,  Too 
— Revealing  the  Unexpressed  Emotions — Irving  as 
Becket — "  One  Thing  at  a  Time  " — Doing  Just 
Enough — Coquelin's  Peculiar  Mannerism — When  in 
Doubt  Do  Nothing — The  Set  Gestures  of  the  Good 
Old  Days — An  Example  of  Splendid  Repose — Sav- 
ing Bits  of  Business  for  Future  Use — Gestures  Grow 
from  Character^  Not  from  Lines — Heroic  Gestures 
for  Heroic  Plays — Never  Let  Them  See  too  Much. 

I  HAVE  been  told  by  young  actors  that, 
in  their  opinion,  it  is  foohsh  to  bother 
one's  head  about  the  mechanics  and  the 
technique  and  the  principle  of  what  they  do. 
They  say  they  feel  restrained  and  self-con- 
scious and  stilted  if  they  do  this.  They 
want  to  forget  that  they  are  acting  and  de- 
pend upon  their  innate  artistic  sense  for 
results.  I  suppose  in  no  other  profession 
would  this  absurd  attitude  be  met.  The  be- 
ginning musician  never  dreams  of  plunging 

79 


80  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

into  the  difficult  compositions  of  the  master 
composers,  until  he  has  spent  years  in  study 
of  the  mere  mechanics  of  his  art.  He  starts 
with  finger  exercises,  then  practices  scales, 
and  at  length  tries  very  simple  pieces.  He 
rises  above,  and  forgets,  his  elementary  les- 
sons after  a  time,  but  he  never  thinks  of  try-  | 
ing  to  skip  them.  But  on  the  stage,  the 
novice  often  chafes  at  the  primary  lessons, 
and  often  scorns  them  altogether.  But  finger 
exercises  in  the  actor's  art  are  just  as  essen- 
tial as  they  are  in  the  musician's;  the  me- 
chanical, technical  groundwork  must  be  there, 
but  of  course  eventually  we  must  become 
unconscious  of  it. 

In  the  last  chapter  we  spoke  of  how  the 
actor,  on  the  stage,  must  be  able  to  let  the 
audience  see  that  his  character  is  thinking 
thoughts  and  having  emotions  which  are  not 
expressed  in  words.  Also  in  many  cases,  we 
convey  many  emotions  to  the  audience,  which 
the  other  characters  of  the  play  are  supposed 
not  to  know  about.  And  it  is,  to  a  large  ex- 
tent, with  the   eyes  that  such   emotions   are 


THE  EYE  AND  THE  HANDS  81 

conveyed  to  the  audience.  These  emotions,  \ 
it  is  apparent,  are  often  as  important  as  any 
in  the  play,  for  they  reveal  the  inner  quali- 
ties and  the  soul  of  the  person  we  are  playing. 
Clearly  in  speaking  of  the  use  of  the  eyes  on 
the  stage,  it  is  impossible  to  be  dogmatic  and 
arbitrary.  The  skilful  use  of  the  eye,  how- 
ever, adds  enormously  to  the  effectiveness  of 
one's  performance,  and  until  an  actor  is  able 
to  use  to  advantage  this  potent  w^eapon  in  his 
equipment  he  can  never  achieve  big  results. 
I  was  once  forcibly  impressed  with  how 
very  much  can  be  accomplished  by  a  mere 
glance,  while  watching  Irving  play  Becket 
in  Tennyson's  play  of  that  name.  The  King 
had  just  offered  him  the  Archbishopric  of 
York.  Becket  was  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer and  a  laymen  when  the  offer  was 
made  to  him.  It  is,  we  all  realize,  a  mo- 
mentous crisis  in  the  lives  of  the  two  friends, 
the  King  and  Becket.  It  is  as  though^  in 
some  vivid  premonition,  Becket  realizes  it 
too.  Irving,  as  Becket,  listened  to  the  pro- 
posal in  respectful  silence.     Then  his  eyes. 


82  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

for  an  instant,  darted  away  from  the  King, 
then  back  to  him.  In  that  glance  was  com- 
pressed all  the  vague  terror  he  felt,  all  the 
ominous  foreboding  lest  the  appointment 
would,  in  the  end,  sever  their  friendship,  and 
mean  disaster.  It  was  done  with  that  look 
of  his  eyes,  merely  that  instant's  flash;  yet  it 
conveyed  to  me  most  powerfully  the  emotions 
in  the  breast  of  Becket.  It  is  the  moment 
which  stands  out  in  my  memory  of  the  per- 
formance. Of  course  Irving  had  wonderful 
eyes,  or  rather  he  had  wonderful  control  over 
them.  I  would  not  say  that  they  were  good 
eyes  for  the  stage,  because  they  were  so  small ; 
but  he  was  able  to  use  them  with  exceeding 
skill. 

There  are  one  or  two  technical  principles 
which  must  govern  the  effective  use  of  the 
eyes,  but  the  most  important  of  aH  is  the  one 
which  applies  to  so  much  of  our  work.  We 
must  be  immersed  in  the  character  tor  be 
able  to  feel  these  unexpressed  emotions*  That 
is  the  starting  point.  Once  the  part  is  really 
our   own,    these   inner   reactions    cannot   fail 


THE  EYE  AND  THE  HANDS  83 

to  be  clear  to  us.  The  question  for  us,  in 
the  present  work,  is  to  discover  if  there  are 
any  general  rules  which  we  should  follow  in 
attempting  to  impress  upon  the  audience 
these  emotions  which  have  revealed  themselves 
to  us. 

One  rule  there  certainly  is  of  universal 
application.  When  an  actor  wants  the  audi- 
ence to  notice  his  eye,  he  should  give  them 
nothing  else  to  look  at.  He  should  not,  for 
instance,  move  his  eyes  and  his  head  at  the 
same  time.  "  One  thing  at  a  time "  is  a 
good  maxim  to  remember.  If  an  actor  is 
to  bestow  a  look  of  bitterness  on  a  man  he  is 
not  facing,  his  natural  inclination  is  to  turn 
and  face  him.  But  to  do  this  might  convey 
nothing.  The  audience  might  very  well  miss 
the  expression  of  hatred  entirely.  I  think 
it  is  a  good  plan,  in  any  situation  of  this 
kind,  to  let  our  eyes  seek  the  man  before  we 
turn  our  head,  to  dart  our  black  look  at  him 
just  the  instant  before  we  move  the  head. 
There  should  be  a  flash,  an  instant's  picture, 
just  enough  to  photograph  the  look  on  the 


84  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

minds  of  the  audience.  The  time  required 
for  this  is  infinitesimal.  Irving's  glance  at 
the  King,  which  was  as  memorable  as  any- 
thing else  in  the  play,  probably  took  but  an 
instant's  time,  but  I  got  the  expression 
clearly;  and  I  have  no  doubt  it  was  because 
he  was  very  careful  that  for  that  instant  he 
should  do  nothing  to  distract  attention  from 
his  eyes. 

Another  thing  to  bear  in  mind  is  that, 
in  many  cases,  the  eye  the  audience  see  is 
not  always  the  eye  the  other  actors  on  the 
stage  see.  This  is  a  fact  that  is  often  ignored 
by  actors  good  and  bad.  Their  eyes  express 
many  vital  things,  but  they  forget  that  the 
actors  in  the  play  are  the  ones  who  see  these 
expressions,  instead  of  the  audience.  We 
should  not  only  know  precisely  what  we  can 
do  to  reinforce  our  performance  with  our  eyes, 
but  we  should  take  every  care  to  see  that 
each  shade  of  feeling  is  registered  unmistak- 
ably on  the  people  in  the  auditorium. 

This,  of  course,  does  not  mean  grimacing 
and  glaring  and  rolling  the  eyes  at  the  gal- 


,  THE  EYE  AND  THE  HANDS  85 

lery.  In  this,  as  in  everything  on  the  stage, 
we  should  be  frugal.  We  should  find  out  just 
how  little  is  needed  to  register  any  effect. 
And  anything  more  than  just  enough  is  likely 
to  be  a  great  deal  too  much.  It  is  easy  to 
waste  the  eye  on  little  things,  whereas  it  is  a 
powerful  medium  which  should  be  saved  for 
the  big.  It  is  an  abiding  principle  with  me 
that  we  should  save  all  we  can  of  all  our 
powers  for  the  big  things.  The  less  we 
spend,  the  more  we  will  have  in  reserve; 
and  the  impression  of  reserve  power  cannot 
fail  to  add  power  and  confidence  to  our 
work. 

I  once  saw  CoqueUn  in  Cyrano  de  Ber- 
gerac;  and  I  am  not  sure  that  he  did  not 
carry  this  economy  in  the  use  of  his  eyes  a 
little  too  far  for  my  personal  enjoyment. 
Certainly  he  had  a  most  peculiar  way  of  us- 
ing them.  He  played  most  of  the  time  with 
his  eyes  shut,  only  opening  them  to  emphasize 
some  particular  point.  He  had,  in  a  way, 
discarded  technique  entirely.  The  impres- 
sion his  performance  made  on  me  was  a  mixed 


86  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

one.  I  did  not  know  whether  he  had  im- 
pressed me  as  being  bored  with  the  part — 
he  had  played  it  over  a  thousand  times — or 
whether  he  seemed  to  me  merely  affected.  I 
am  sm^e  that  it  was  a  most  distracting  man- 
nerism. It  shattered  the  illusion  for  me.  He 
may  have  done  it  because  his  eyes  were  weak 
and  could  not  stand  the  glare  of  the  lights, 
or  he  may  have  thought  that  his  acting  gained 
power,  since  he  was  able  to  make  more  effec- 
tive the  few  points  he  did  accentuate  by  the 
use  of  his  eyes.  I  should  admit  that  the 
method,  after  all,  attracted  me  in  a  way,  but 
after  leaving  the  theater  I  came  to  the  con- 
clusion that  it  was  merely  the  novelty  of  it 
that  had  pleased.  I  did  not  consider  the  per- 
formance a  remarkable  one  for  a  man  of  his 
reputation;  I  cannot  conceive  of  such  an  en- 
ergetic enthusiast  as  Cyrano  going  about  with 
his  eyes  closed.  It  is  very  likely,  however, 
that  the  performance  I  saw  failed  to  do 
Coquelin  justice.  He  had  played  the  part 
so  often;  and  the  audience,  I  am  sure,  un- 
derstood little  French  and  were  thus  small 


THE  EYE  AND  THE  HANDS         ,87 

inspiration  for  him.  But  his  method  of  using 
his  eyes  illustrates  our  point.  We  should 
jealously  save  our  eye  for  the  vital  things, 
though  I  do  not  think  it  is  necessary  to  close 
them.  Such  an  obvious  method  calls  atten- 
tion to  the  mechanics  of  our  art. 

We  should  always,  in  striving  for  effects 
and  impressions,  seek  to  conceal  the  means 
by  which  we  gain  them.  If  an  actor's  ges- 
tures are  not  perfectly  natural  to  the  actor 
himself  they  are  pretty  likely  to  seem  awk- 
ward to  him;  and  if  they  are  awkward  for 
him,  they  will  be  noticed  by  the  audience. 
That  is,  the  audience  will  be  conscious  of  the 
gesture  itself,  rather  than  of  the  impression 
the  actor  wishes  to  create  by  it.  Many  young 
actors  seem  to  think  that  unless  they  are  able 
to  do  something  with  their  hands,  they  will 
be  suspected  of  being  amateurs;  but  the  most 
difficult  thing  in  all  the  actor's  art  is  the 
faculty  of  doing  nothing  at  the  right  time. 
A  good  general  rule  to  follow  is:  when  in 
doubt,  do  nothing;  never  make  a  gesture 
until  there  is  absolutely  no  doubt  of  its  pro- 


88  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

priety  in  your  own  mind,  wait  until  you  are 
compelled  to  make  it. 

This  matter  of  the  use  of  the  hands  has 
undergone  a  great  change  as  the  art  of  the 
actor  has  developed.  In  the  days  of  Kemble 
and  Kean  it  was  very  different  from  what 
it  is  today.  Then  every  emotion  had  a  set 
gesture  by  which  it  should  be  expressed. 
Gesturing  was  a  canonized  thing.  A  certain 
position  of  the  hands  indicated  pity,  another 
supphcation,  another  horror.  Many  of  those 
gestures  today  seem  as  meaningless  as  the 
flourishes  some  pianists  indulge  in — raising 
their  hands  high  above  the  keyboard  and  the 
like.  In  those  days  the  hands  and  arms  were 
gracefully  manipulated  according  to  certain 
definite  laws,  and  the  artist  was  known  by 
his  ability  to  squeeze  everything  he  did  into 
the  rigid  mould  they  provided  him.  Not 
for  a  moment  do  I  mean  to  condemn  or 
sneer,  in  the  modern  fashion,  at  those  old 
conventions.  Then  it  was  art.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  the  conventions  we  have  today 
(and  we  have  plenty  of  them)   will,  in  the 


THE  EYE  AND  THE  HANDS  89 

future,  seem  quite  as  quaint  and  futile.  But 
rightly  or  wrongly,  we  have  grown  away 
from  that  set  way  of  using  our  hands  and 
arms.  We  have  been  bringing  the  stage 
closer  to  real  life — as  we  suppose.  I  do 
not  think  we  can  be  sure  that  it  is  better 
art,  it  is  merely  new  methods  applied  to  the 
same  art.  It  is  merely  a  big  change  in  point 
of  view.  So  it  is  from  real  life  and  feal 
emotions,  not  from  tradition,  that  an  actor 
must  learn  his  gestures  today. 

One  of  the  finest  and  most  impressive  il- 
lustrations of  the  modern  way  of  doing  noth- 
ing that  I  have  ever  seen,  was  in  the  play 
Hindle  Wakes,  as  it  was  given  by  Miss 
Horniman's  company  in  Manchester,  Eng- 
land. The  son  of  the  household  had  come  in 
when  everybody  else  in  the  family  had  been 
hours  in  bed.  His  father  has  come  down- 
stairs with  a  candle  in  one  hand  and  a  poker 
in  the  other,  evidently  expecting  to  find  a 
burglar.  But  when  the  old  gentleman  finds 
it  is  his  son,  he  proceeds  to  give  him  a  lec- 
ture.   He  speaks  in  a  low  voice  so  as  not  to 


90  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

disturb  the  others  who  are  asleep.  The 
father's  speech  is  thirty  or  forty  lines  in 
length,  and  throughout  his  delivery  of  it,  the 
actor  playing  the  father  stood  perfectly  still, 
without  making  a  single  gesture.  As  the 
quiet  voice  went  on  in  the  stillness,  and  the 
old  man  stood  motionless  with  the  candle  and 
the  poker  in  his  hands,  utterly  unaware  that 
he  had  either,  we  got  a  sense  of  the  intense 
earnestness  of  the  father,  and  the  ominous 
significance  of  the  quiet  scene.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  speculate  on  what  some  actor  of  the 
old  school  might  have  to  say  of  such  a  scene 
if  he  could  rise  from  his  grave  and  look  in 
upon  it.  To  him,  I  am  sure,  it  would  not 
be  acting  at  all.  But  it  is  the  w^  we  do 
things  today. 

We  should  be  very  cautious  about  adopting 
gestures  which  we  see  others  use.  To  do  that 
blindly  stifles  our  creative  originality.  When 
we  see  another  actor  do  an  effective  bit  of 
business  we  can  remember  it  and  apply  it 
to  our  own  work  and  make  it  our  own;  and 
then,  when  it  seems  to  fit  our  part,  we  can 


THE  EYE  AND  THE  HANDS  91 

modify  it  to  our  needs  and  make  use  of  it. 
But  before  we  do  use  such  a  gesture  we 
should  be  very  sure  that  the  gesture  is  our 
own.  I  have  saved  a  gesture  for  years  be- 
fore it  seemed  to  me  that  I  could  use  it  with 
propriety;  I  had  seen  an  actor  whom  I  ad- 
mired make  a  certain  gesture,  and  I  was 
strongly  tempted  several  times  to  try  it  my- 
self, yet  I  knew  quite  well  that  I  should 
simply  be  copying  him  if  I  did,  I  knew  there 
was  no  actual  place  for  it  in  my  performance. 
But  I  did  not  forget  the  gesture;  and  when 
I  did  finally  employ  it,  it  had  become  my 
own.  We  should  never  force  a  gesture  on 
our  character,  it  is  better  to  wait  until  the 
character  forces  a  gesture  on  us. 

It  may  be  said  that  nowadays  the  ges- 
tures grow  from  the  character  of  the  person 
we  represent,  rather  than  from  the  lines  he 
speaks.  Thus  if  we  have  assimilated  the 
character,  the  gestures  are  likely  to  follow 
inevitably.  It  is  a  good  plan  to  bend  our 
thought  on  the  characteristics  of  the  man  we 
are  playing,  to  bend  our  thought  on  those 


92  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

habits  of  mind  and  conduct  which  make  him 
what  he  is  and  which  differentiate  him  from 
the  other  people  in  the  play;  then  we  need 
not  think  of  just  how  we  are  to  move  our 
hands  or  shoulders,  that  knowledge  will  come 
as  a  natural  corollary  to  the  solution  we  have 
found  of  the  problem. 

Oddly  enough,  then,  in  a  chapter  which 
sets  out  to  examine  the  problem  of  gesturing 
on  the  modern  stage,  we  find  that  the  best 
way  is  to  turn  away  from  the  problem  of  ges- 
turing altogether.  But  if  we  really  succeed 
in  making  this  point,  we  have  accomplished 
a  great  deal.  If  we  have  seen  that  there 
can  be  nothing  hard  and  fast  about  this  phase 
of  the  craft,  because  there  is  nothing  hard 
and  fast  about  human  nature,  we  have 
touched  upon  a  useful  truth.  If  the  young 
actor  sees  that  because  he  is  supposed  to  be 
angry  there  is  no  reason  for  his  clenching  his 
fists,  because  some  men  would  never  clench 
their  fists,  we  may  feel  that  we  have  made 
our  point. 

In  Shakespearian  parts,  and  plays  of  the 


THE  EYE  AND  THE  HANDS  93 

heroic,  costume  type  generally,  it  is  possible 
to  be  a  little  Hiore  dogmatic.  Those  "  heroic  " 
parts,  human  though  many  of  them  are,  are 
/human  in  a  magnified  form.  Their  emotions 
are  thrown  into  high  relief ;  they  are  exag- 
gerated according  to  the  art-conventions  of 
the  time.  With  them  we  must  project  our 
emotions  on  a  larger  scale.  Our  gestures, 
corresponding  with  the  emotions  expressed, 
should  be  freer  and,  in  a  sense,  more  formal 
in  that  we  are  guided,  not  by  real  life,  but  by 
the  artistic  canons  of  the  time  in  which  the 
plays  were  written.  In  plays  of  the  old  type 
the  arms  should  as  a  rule  be  moved  from 
the  shoulder,  I  should  say;  while  in  modern 
plays  we  work  more  from  the  elbow.  Today* 
we  suggest  more  than  we  actually  do  on  the 
stage.  We  do  just  enough  to  register  the 
emotion,  to  inoculate  the  audience  with 
the  right  germ — and  we  stop  there.  But 
in  the  past  they  were  not  content  with  that; 
they  strove,  perhaps  we  may  say,  to  visual- 
ize the  tempests  of  emotion  which  in  reality 
took  place  in  the  soul  of  the  character. 


94  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

An  actor  can  afford  to  be  very  careful 
what  he  lets  his  audience  see  him  do,  and 
he  should  strive  never  to  let  them  see  too 
much.     It  is  always  surprising  to  find  how 

^  quick  an  audience  are  with  thgir  eye,  how  very 
little  is  missed.  Even  when  the  attention  is 
riveted  on  an  exciting  scene,  the  sight  of  a 
white  handkerchief  unexpectedly  taken  from 
the  pocket  of  an  actor  is  enough  to  switch 
the  thought,  for  the  moment,  away  from 
the  center  of  interest.    Unless  there  is  a  defi- 

/  nite  reason  we  should  never  move  on  another's 

^  speech.  We  should  move  on  our  own;  and 
the  movement  should  come  at  the  end  of  the 
sense,  at  a  natural  break  in  the  thought,  not 
in  the  middle  of  it.  If  we  find  it  necessary 
to  cough,  we  should  try  to  cough  during 
our  own  speech,  when  the  audience  are  pay- 
ing attention  to  us,  rather  than  during  the 
other  man's  speech  when  they  are  giving  their 
attention  to  him. 

So,  after  all,  repose  is  what  we  should  aim 
r.    for.     With  gesturing,  as  with  almost  every- 
thing else,  the  less  one  does  of  it  the  better. 


THE  EYE  AND  THE  HANDS  95 

Too  many  gestures  are  worse  than  too  few.j 
We  should  never  make  a  big  gesture  where  ^ 
a  little  one  will  suffice;  and  we  should  never  \ 
use  one  at  all  unless  it  has  a  definite  func-.  \ 
tion,  and  unless  we  take  care  to  register  itl  \ 
properly  on  the  audience.     Thought  should  i, 
always  precede  our  gestures,  they  should  al-!*^ 
ways  grow  from  something  inside.  ; 

These,  I  realize,  are  simple  truisms  of  the 
actor's  craft.  But  it  is  the  simple  truths, 
that  everyone  knows,  that  are  apt  to  be  taken 
for  granted  and  forgotten.  Let  me  repeat 
here  that  as  we  learn  more  and  more  about 
the  intricacies  of  our  craft,  we  are  more  and 
more  in  danger  of  forgetting  the  funda- 
mentals upon  which  our  knowledge  is  based. 
The  great  task  is  to  remain  direct  and  simple 
as  we  master  the  complexities  and  subtleties 
of  our  craft. 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING 

One  Actor  Cannot  Stand  Alone — Supplementing  the 
Speeches  of  Others — Sweet  Nell  of  Old  Drury 
and  The  Lady  of  Lyons — Team-work  Will  Cover 
a  Multitude  of  Sins — Pinero's  Advice — Coaxing  the 
Audience  to  Listen — Listening  Through  Long  Speeches 
— Know  What  You  Are  Going  to  Do  When  Silent — 
Varying  Our  Reading — Miming  Must  Grow  from  the 
Character — Retaining  the  Illusion  of  the  First  Time 
— The  Point,  Thrust,  and  Lunge — Thinking  Lines — 
Giving  the  Audience  a  Rest — Little  Things  All 
Count. 

THE  art  of  doing  nothing  and  the  art 
of  listening  on  the  stage  are  about  as 
important  and  about  as  difficult  as  any- 
thing an  actor  has  to  do;  for  as  long  as  he 
is  on  the  stage,  he  is  contributing  to  or  de- 
tracting from  the  effect  the  play  is  making 
on  the  audience,  whether  he  is  speaking  or 
not.  As  long  as  the  curtain  is  up,  some- 
body is  always  speaking  or  something  is  al- 
ways happening;   and  whatever   is   done,   or 

96 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING         97 

not  done,  in  silence,  is  sure  to  have  a  good  or 
bad  effect  on  the  play.  We  never  have  noth- 
ing to  do  on  the  stage.  It  is  always  our 
business  to  make  what  the  other  fellow  is  do- 
ing or  saying  as  effective  as  we  can.  The 
effect  a  play  makes  on  an  audience  is  a  com- 
posite thing.  One  actor  cannot  stand  alone, 
he  cannot  get  along  without  the  others,  and 
the  others  cannot  get  along  without  him. 
Half  of  our  work  is  to  make  our  own  speeches 
effective,  half  of  it  is  to  make  effective  the 
speeches  of  our  associates  in  the  piece.  If 
someone  insults  us  on  the  stage  that  insult 
will  not  carry  much  force  with  the  audience 
unless  we  show  them  that  we  have  been  in- 
sulted. In  real  life  we  would  try  to  give, 
no  sign  of  our  chagrin,  but  on  the  stage  we 
rob  the  play  of  an  effect  if  we  conceal  our 
hurt  feelings.  We  appear  perhaps  to  take 
the  insult  as  we  should  on  the  street,  but  the 
audience  must  see  by  some  subtle  movement 
of  the  body  or  some  flash  in  our  eye,  that 
we  have  been  hurt. 

It  may  seem  incredible,  but  I  have  known 


kA'' 


98  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

actors  and  actresses  so  selfish,  so  inartistic, 
that  they  would  deliberately  refrain  from  sup- 
plementing another's  speech  in  this  way.  I 
remember  once  in  England  I  was  producing 
a  play  called  Sweet  Nell  of  Old  Drury  in 
which  there  was  a  war  of  wits  between  Nell 
Gwynne,  the  orange  girl,  and  Lady  Castle- 
maine.  Lady  Castlemaine  is  sadly  worsted 
\  in  the  conflict,  and  the  actress  who  played 
her,  not  liking  this,  remamed  perfectly  in- 
different to  the  galling  thrusts  of  sarcasm 
she  received.  I  tried  to  point  out  that  she 
was  wrong,  but  she  did  not  agree  with  me. 
So  I  gave  up  remonstrating  with  her  finally, 
and  told  her  to  do  it  her  own  way,  if  she  was 
determined  not  to  listen  to  advice.  When 
the  dress  rehearsal  came  I  spoke  to  her 
again  after  this  scene.  "  I  suppose,"  said  I, 
"  you  imagine  you  are  going  to  make  a  big 
hit  in  this  part?  I'm  afraid  I  must  tell  you 
for  your  own  good  that  your  performance  is 
going  to  be  rather  a  colorless  affair."  Since 
it  was  the  dress  rehearsal,  she  was  worried 
and  nervous,  as  I  had  known  she  would  be. 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING  99 

She  asked  me  what  was  the  matter  with  her 
acting,  and  I  rephed,  "  You  should  do  as  I 
suggest  and  register  the  hits  Nell  Gwynne 
makes  on  you." 

She  retorted,  "  I  am  not  going  to  let  that 
woman  see  tha^t  she  is  getting  the  best  of 
me!" 

"  I  never  intended  that  you  should.  I 
only  want  you  to  let  the  audience  see  it,"  I 
replied. 

The  truth  of  it  dawned  on  her  then,  and 
on  the  opening  night  she  played  the  scene  in 
that  way.  The  result  was  that  she  gave  a 
splendid  performance.  The  audience  were 
interested  not  only  in  Nell  Gwynne 's  words, 
but  also  in  the  effect  of  them  on  Lady  Castle- 
maine.  Until  they  were  satisfied  on  both 
these  counts  the  scene  was  incomplete. 

In  The  Lady  of  Lyons  there  is  another 
good  illustration  of  how  one  actor  must  de- 
pend on  another.  Toward  the  end  of  that 
sturdy  old  play,  Claude  Melnotte  unmasks 
the  villain  in  a  grand  speech.  The  real 
nature  of  the  villain  is  revealed  by  the  hero. 


100  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

to  the  great  delight  of  the  audience.  I 
recall  an  occasion  on  which  this  scene  was 
received  with  more  ecstasy  than  usual.  The 
actor  who  was  playing  Melnotte  was  quite 
elated,  afterwards.  "  Well,"  he  said  to  the 
villain,  "  that  was  a  fine  round  of  applause 
I  got  tonight,  wasn't  it?  " 

"  Yes,"  was  the  reply,  "  we  did  get  a  good 


one. 


"We!"  echoed  the  star.  "Do  you  think 
you  had  anything  to  do  with  it? " 

The  villain  admitted  that  such  had  been  his 
impression.  The  hero  stiffened  a  little,  "  You 
flatter  yourself,"  he  said. 

When  the  next  performance  came  Claude 
Melnotte  unmasked  his  adversary  in  his  fin- 
est manner;  but  the  latter,  instead  of  acting 
with  the  deepest  mortification  and  rage,  re- 
mained perfectly  still,  quite  impassive.  The 
round  of  applause  which  had  begun  as  usual 
took  a  sudden  drop  and  died  altogether. 
Afterward  the  hero  admitted  that  his  fine 
denunciation  was  no  good  unless  the  effect 
of  it  on  the  villain  was  shown.     I  may  add 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING       101 

that  I  was  playing  one  of  those  parts,  and 
it  was  not  the  hero. 

The  value  of  this  "  team-work  "  in  a  com- 
pany cannot  be  over-estimated.  One  actor 
cannot  stand  alone.  He  must  depend  upon 
his  fellows  to  shade  and  emphasize  his  work. 
It  would  be  splendid  if  every  actor  should 
realize  that  half  of  his  work  is  the  reading 
of  his  own  part,  half  of  it  is  the  "  playing- 
up  "  to  the  others.  A  scene  simply  cannot 
make  its  effect  through  the  efforts  of  one 
actor;  it  must  come  through  the  concerted 
effort  of  all  the  actors  in  the  scene;  and 
these  various  efforts,  must  be  blended  the  one 
into  the  other.  Anyone  who  goes  to  the 
theater  often  has  felt  a  scene  building  up 
steadily  and  powerfully,  only  to  be  shattered 
by  the  mere  voice  of  some  minor  character, 
perhaps,  who  is  out  of  key,  out  of  the  mood, 
of  the  whole.  I  once  saw  a  repertoire  com- 
pany of  average  capacity  give  a  performance 
of  Arnold  Bennett's  What  the  Public  Wants. 
I  myself  had  taken  part  in  Charles  Hawtrey's 
London  production  of  the  piece;  but  I  real- 


102  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

ized  very  clearly  that,  as  a  complete  work, 
this  repertoire  production  threw  ours  com- 
pletely in  the  shade.  The  individual  parts, 
of  course,  were  not  played  nearly  so  well  as 
they  had  been  in  London,  but  the  ensemble 
was  infinitely  better.  The  effect  of  the  play, 
as  a  whole,  was  much  more  clear-cut  and 
powerful  than  ours  had  been.  This  was 
due  to  the  superb  team-work  of  the  company. 
They  all  devoted  themselves  to  the  play;  they 
forgot  themselves,  they  all  helped  each  other. 
But  there  is  not  the  least  reason,  that  I  can 
see,  why  this  team-work  should  be  confined 
to  repertoire  companies.  The  faculty  of  ren- 
dering all  possible  aid  to  his  fellows  should 
be  cultivated  by  every  actor  as  a  matter  of 
course. 

We  always  find,  in  any  play,  a  certain 
amount  of  necessary  exposition,  a  certain 
routine  of  stating  the  relations  and  conditions 
upon  which  the  story  is  based;  and  this  ma- 
terial in  itself  may  not  be  particularly  in- 
teresting. We  should  expect  these  arid 
stretches  in  every  part  we  play,  and  it  would 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING        103 

be  well  if  we  prepared  ourselves  to  make  an 
extra  effort  through  them.  A  striking  case 
in  point  is  Sir  Arthur  Wing  Pinero's  The 
Thunderbolt.  In  that  fine  play  there  is  a 
scene  in  which  many  of  the  characters  sit 
about  a  large  table  while  two  lawyers  explain 
to  them  the  law  governing  the  making  of 
wills.  We  were  rehearsing  the  play  at  the 
St.  James  Theater  in  London,  and  during 
this  bit  Pinero  stopped  the  rehearsal,  and 
said,  "  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  know  this  is 
very  prosaic  and  uninteresting  to  you,  and 
that  it  will  be  so  to  the  audience;  but  it  is 
absolutely  necessary,  for  the  sake  of  what 
is  to  come,  that  this  be  driven  into  their 
minds.  Now  if  you  show  by  your  attitude 
that  you  are  not  interested  in  it,  you  may  be 
sure  the  audience  will  not  be  interested  in 
it  either.  So  when  you  reach  the  more  in- 
teresting matter  later  on,  which  is  founded 
on  this  dry  law  business,  you  will  be  sur- 
prised to  find  that  you  have  lost  your  hold 
on  the  audience  and  that  they  do  not  realize 
what  you   are  talking  about.     Therefore   I 


104  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

beg  of  you  to  listen  to  this  explanation  of 
the  law,  and  to  show  by  your  attitude  and 
attention  that  the  characters  consider  it  of 
vital  importance  to  them.  Then  the  audience 
will  listen  to  it,  too."  Into  this  sage  advice 
is  packed  a  great  truth,  for  the  searching  test 
of  the  actor  lies  in  his  ability  to  keep  the 
audience  alert  and  interested  through  what 
is  often  mere  routine  preliminary  exposition. 
It  is  in  the  silent  things  he  does  here,  and 
indeed  in  the  silent  things  he  does  through- 
,  out,  that  the  actor  proves  himself;  it  is  not  in 
V  the  powerful  speech  and  powerful  moment. 
I  have  found  that  the  "  big  "  scenes  are  often 
the  easiest  work  I  have  had  to  do  in  an  eve- 
ning; they  will,  if  they  are  genuine,  almost 
carry  themselves.  It  is  the  things  we  do  to 
supplement  our  spoken  words,  and  the  spoken 
words  of  others;  the  things  we  do  through- 
out (but  especially  toward  the  beginning) 
to  foment  interest,  that  call  out  our  best 
resources.  The  successful  actor  is  he  who  can 
touch  out  and  reinforce  and  make  attractive 
the  less  attractive  portions  of  the  play;  just 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING        105 

as  the  successful  lawyer  is  not  the  man  who 
sums  up  his  case  in  a  burst  of  oratory  on  the 
last  day  of  the  trial,  but  the  one  who  is  able 
to  make  the  simple,  prosaic  facts  on  which 
his  argument  is  based  burn  their  way,  willy 
nilly,  into  the  minds  of  the  jury. 

The  power  of  listening  to  the  speech  of 
another  in  such  a  way  that  the  audience  are 
coaxed  to  listen  also,  is  one  of  the  most  di- 
rect means  by  which  we  are  able  to  burn  the 
simple  prosaic  facts  of  the  play  into  the 
minds  of  the  audience;  and  it  is  a  supremely 
important  branch  of  the  actor's  craft. 

The  first  scene  in  Bernard  Shaw's  Major 
Barbara  is  an  amazing  example  of  that  au- 
thor's bland  disregard  of  convention.  He 
has  a  volume  of  comparatively  uninteresting 
facts  to  place  before  the  audience  before  the 
people  of  the  play  can  be  understood.  Does 
he  devise  some  winning  little  incident  to 
start  the  play,  some  incident  into  which  he 
can  unobtrusively  insinuate  this  involved  "  ex- 
position"? Not  Shaw.  Lady  Britomart  and 
her  son,  Stephen,  sit  on  a  settee  in  the  center 


106         PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

of  the  stage,  and  for  fifteen  minutes  or  more 
the  actor  playing  Stephen  must  Hsten  to  an 
exhaustive  and  detailed  summary  of  the  sit- 
uation in  the  Undershaft  family,  past,  pres- 
ent, and  future.  Lady  Britomart  begins  by 
telling  Stephen  that  he  was  twenty-four  years 
old  the  previous  June;  she  goes  on  to  sketch 
the  education  and  travel  he  has  enjoyed,  he 
has  been  to  Harrow  and  Cambridge,  in  India 
and  Japan.  She  then  speaks  of  his  sister 
Sarah's  engagement  to  "  Cholly "  Lomax, 
who  will  be  a  milhonaire  at  thirty-five;  she 
tells  him  that  his  other  sister,  Barbara,  is  to 
marry  an  impecunious  professor  of  Greek; 
she  states  the  exact  income  of  her  own  father; 
then  turns  to  a  consideration  of  her  husband, 
Stephen's  father.  We  learn  that  he  is  a 
maker  of  munitions,  that  he  was  an  illegiti- 
mate son;  that  his  name  is  not  really  Under- 
shaft, but  that  that  name  was  bestowed 
upon  him  when  he  was  adopted  by  his  prede- 
cessor in  the  office  of  president  of  the  muni- 
tions plant.  We  might  suppose  that  this  in- 
formation   was    sufficient    for    Stephen,    but 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING       107 

Lady  Britomart  has  only  begun.  She  says, 
"  Now  be  a  good  boy,  Stephen,  and  hsten 
to  me  patiently."  And  she  launches  off  into 
a  long  explanation  of  the  Undershaft  custom 
of  leaving  the  great  industry  in  the  hands 
of  a  foundling,  when  one  generation  gives 
way  to  the  next.  Throughout  this  long  scene 
Stephen  has  only  a  few  perfunctory  speeches; 
for  most  of  the  time  he  must  listen.  A  good 
actor  playing  this  part  is  able  to  point  and 
make  more  vital  what  Lady  Britomart  says, 
by  his  appearance  of  rapt,  and  at  times  pain- 
ful, attention;  he  makes  it  more  amusing 
by  his  tendency  to  be  shocked  at  his  mother's 
blunt  statements,  he  can  keep  in  the  picture, 
and  add  vitality  to  the  long  speeches;  though 
it  is  true  the  scene  is  so  brilliantly  written 
that  the  audience  forgets  the  prosiness  of  the 
facts  themselves,  forgets  that  nothing  what- 
ever is  happening. 

But  an  actor  playing  a  scene  of  this  kind 
must  know  exactly  how  he  is  going  to  behave 
while  the  other  is  speaking  to  him.  It  is  a 
grievous   mistake  to   leave   it  to   chance,   as 


108  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

unfortunately  a  great  many  do.  If  he  hap- 
pens to  be  in  just  the  right  mood  he  may 
fare  well  enough;  but  he  cannot  expect  to  be 
always  in  the  right  mood.  The  workmanlike 
thing,  for  anyone  who  is  striving  to  fit  him- 
self for  worth-while  work  on  the  stage,  is 
to  study  out  for  himself  some  sort  of  broad 
technique  for  his  listening,  which  will  be  a 
guide — merely  a  general  guide,  of  course — 
for  any  part  he  may  play. 

Not  that  he  should  try  to  force  himself  to 
do  precisely  the  same  things  night  after 
night.  Every  actor  should  be  able  to  vary 
his  performance  slightly  every  night,  other- 
wise the  monotony  of  his  work  would  be  fatal 
to  all  freshness  and  spontaneity.  We  should 
be  able  to  try  little  variations  of  emphasis, 
to  show  more  emotion  here  on  some  nights, 
and  less  there;  we  should  try  to  give  a  comic 
turn  to  a  situation  sometimes,  and  a  pathetic 
turn  at  others,  to  see  which  is  more  effective. 
But  we  should  always  have  some  sort  of  guide 
which  will  prevent  us  from  going  too  far 
afield.    Our  ship  should  always  be  firmly  an- 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING        109 

chored;  we  may,  and  should,  pay  out  more 
rope  some  nights  than  others,  but  we  should 
always  be  very  sure  we  are  not  adrift. 

Years  ago  when  I  was  associated  with  Sir 
Charles  Wyndham,  he  interrupted  me  at  a 
rehearsal  and  said,  "  But,  see  here,  my  boy, 
you  are  not  speaking  the  author's  lines."  I 
replied  that  I  knew  I  was  not  speaking  the 
exact  text,  but  that  I  had  the  sense  of  it. 
He  took  the  occasion  to  give  me  a  little  lec- 
ture. He  impressed  upon  my  mind  the 
absolute  necessity  of  having  the  exact  words 
of  the  text  in  hand  at  the  start.  The  time 
would  come  when  I  should  not  find  the  sub- 
stitute words  coming  easily,  when  I  should 
get  involved  in  words,  and  stray  from  the 
point,  if  I  did  not  have,  as  a  firm  anchorage, 
the  original  words  the  author  had  written. 
Joseph  Jefferson  once  said  that  there  were 
a  thousand  ways  of  playing  one  part;  and 
he  must  have  found  many  of  them  for  Rip 
in  Rip  Van  Winkle,  or  he  could  never  have 
played  the  part  for  years  on  end  as  he  did. 
I  should  imagine  that  David  Warfield  has 


V 


110  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

his  subtle  variations  for  his  impersonation  of 
The  Music  Master,  by  which  he  is  able  to 
stimulate  himself  and  freshen  his  perform- 
ance from  week  to  week.  But  no  one  will 
doubt  that  both  of  these  men  started  first 
of  all  with  a  solid  anchorage  to  which  they 
were  sure  they  could  always  return.  In  the 
silent  portions  of  our  parts — and  the  silent 
are  fully  as  important  as  the  spoken,  often — 
we  do  not  even  have  words  to  guide  us  and 
keep  us  true.  It  must  be  apparent,  then,  how 
necessary  it  is  to  devise  a  guide  for  ourselves 
which  will  roughly  govern  us  always. 

Of  course  it  would  be  stupid  and  presump- 
tuous to  lay  down  any  hard  and  fast  rules 
in  a  matter  which  depends  so  much  on  the 
individuality  of  the  actor,  and  so  much  on 
the  various  requirements  of  various  parts. 
In  some  cases  we  may  achieve  our  end  by  re- 
maining perfectly  still  with  our  eyes  fixed 
on  the  speaker,  thus  focusing  attention  on 
him;  sometimes  it  is  better  to  obliterate  our- 
selves from  the  scene  entirely;  again  it  is  the 
listener  who  gives  the  real  point  and  drive 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING        111 

to  the  other's  speech,  he  may  convey  to  the 
audience  by  his  expression  of  horror  or  pity 
the  depths  of  the  suffering  through  which 
the  other  is  passing;  and  how  often  a  Une 
"  gets  a  laugh,"  not  because  it  is  given  in  a 
clever  way  by  the  actor  who  speaks  it,  but 
because  of  the  way  it  is  received  by  the  list- 
ener !  In  a  tense  scene  the  slightest  movement 
of  the  hand  or  head,  even  on  the  part  of  a 
minor  actor,  is  apt  to  take  on  a  profound  sig- 
nificance in  the  eyes  of  those  absorbed  in  the 
play.  An  actor  may  mar  the  carefully- 
wrought  effect  of  a  situation  by  a  false  move ; 
or  he  may,  by  some  simple  gesture,  enhance 
the  effect  enormously.  More  than  anything 
else  we  do,  perhaps,  our  mode  of  listening  » 
must  grow  directly  from  the  particular  char- 
acter we  are  playing;  for  it  is  by  our  expres- 
sion and  gesture — our  silent  moments — that 
we  convey  the  actual  thoughts  of  the  char- 
acter. Thus,  in  turning  our  attention  to 
this  question  of  listening  with  effect,  we  must  ' 
deal  more  with  principle  than  with  method. 
There   seems   little   doubt  that,   unless  we 


112  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

have  founded  our  interpretation  on  some  such 
analysis  as  we  outlined  in  an  earlier  chapter, 
there  will  be  difficulty  in  sustaining  the  proper 
illusion  through  these  silent  moments.  If  our 
miming  is  to  be  genuine,  there  must  first  be 
a  clear  and  firm  knowledge  of  the  character 
we  are  playing;  we  must  have  forgotten  our- 
selves, and  be  immersed  in  the  character  as 
we  understand  it.  This  seems  almost  self- 
evident.  If  this  is  the  case,  and  our  minds 
are  fixed  on  the  truth  of  the  character  as  re- 
vealed by  our  analysis,  we  may  say  in  a  broad 
sense,  it  is  not  necessary  to  think  much  about 
the  specific  movements  with  which  we  are  to 
attend  and  register  what  is  said  to  us.  These 
will  develop  naturally  from  our  knowledge, 
they  will  not  be  tacked  on,  and  we  are  not 
likely  to  be  so  self-conscious  in  them.  A  cer- 
tain mental  discipline  is  implied  in  this,  of 
course;  a  discipline  which  will  force  us  to 
keep  our  minds  unwaveringly  on  the  char- 
acter. As  a  step  in  finding  the  technique 
which  suits  him  best,  every  young  actor,  I 
should  say,  would  be  repaid   if  he  tried  to 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING        113 

devise  ways  which  will  aid  his  concentration  • 
and  make  him  proof  against  the  distractions 
that  increasing  familiarity  with  the  part  is 
pretty  apt  to  bring.  Then,  with  this  fixed 
knowledge  there  should  be  the  purpose — the 
common  one  of  all  phases  of  our  study — to 
make  what  we  do  a  simple  and  sincere  ex- 
pression of  what  we  conceive  the  character  to 
be.  Thus  we  are  again  driven  back  to  pri- 
mary things;  as  we  strive  to  examine  and 
roughly  codify  this  rather  subtle  and  complex 
business  of  listening  we  are  led  back  to  the 
simple  primary  which  had  to  do  with  cor- 
rect part-study.  No  matter  how  finished 
a  performance  we  give,  we  find  it  essential 
to  keep  intact  the  lines  of  communication  back 
to  our  base. 

The  real  difficulty  of  listening  with  this 
curious  persuasive  effect,  I  have  always  found 
grows  greater  as  the  run  of  the  play  con- 
tinues. The  famiharity  which  is  born  of  this 
prolonged  repetition,  will,  if  care  is  not  taken, 
eventually  kill  the  freshness  of  the  words 
we  speak.     The  little  touches  by  which  we 


114  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

suggest  the  many  thoughts  behind  the  spoken 
words,  the  nicely  calculated  hesitancies  in  the 
delivery  of  them,  are  apt  to  become  so  worn 
by  constant  use  that  they  will  be  scarcely  no- 
ticeable. Of  course  we  should  always  at- 
tempt to  forget  that  we  have  ever  heard  the 
l/'  'words  before,  and  that  we  are  speaking  our 
own  for  the  first  time.  This  is  an  extremely 
difficult  thing  to  do,  and  it  is  not  a  thing  to 
leave  to  the  will,  it  is  a  problem  for  our  tech- 
nique. The  problem  is  that  we  know  exactly 
what  is  to  be  said  to  us  by  the  other  charac- 
ters, yet  must  give  the  impression  that  we  are 
hearing  it  for  the  first  time.  We  must  give 
the  impression,  too,  that  our  answer  is  the 
unstudied  response  to  what  we  hear.  In 
real  life  we  rarely  have  a  glib  answer  on  the 
tip  of  our  tongue.  At  the  risk  of  seeming  to 
make  a  petty  analysis  of  the  obvious,  let  us 
say  that  there  are  usually  three  steps:  we 
listen  to  what  is  said,  we  take  an  instant  to 
grasp  its  meaning,  then  out  of  the  thousand 
and  one  things  we  might  say  in  reply,  we  se- 
lect the  words   which   fit  the   occasion   best. 


I 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING        115 

On  the  stage  if  we  are  to  give  the  impression 
that  we  are  hearing  a  remark  for  the  first 
time,  I  am  certain  that  each  of  these  three 
steps  must  be  suggested.  Of  course  it  should 
be  most  delicately  done,  but  it  should  be  done. 
It  is  much  like  fencing.  If  a  layman  were 
watching  a  fencing  bout  he  would  see  two 
men  hopping  about  and  lunging  at  each  other 
with  the  foils,  and  that  is  about  all  he  would 
see.  But  a  trained  eye  would  know  at  once 
whether  the  fencers  knew  their  business. 
There  are  three  distinct  steps  to  an  attack 
in  fencing.  First  the  sword  is  pointed  at  the 
opponent,  then  the  arm  is  straightened,  then 
there  is  the  forward  lunge  of  the  body.  The 
point,  thrust,  and  lunge  are  necessary  in 
fencing;  but  the  expert  does  the  three  things 
in  rapid  succession,  almost  as  one.  He  him- 
self, no  doubt,  is  scarcely  conscious  of  the 
separate  steps,  though  in  the  beginning  he  had 
to  learn  them  one  at  a  time.  No  one  watching 
him  could  detect  the  three  movements,  but  if 
the  attack  is  to  succeed  properly  they  must 
all  be  there.     Yet  significantly  for  our  point 


116  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

the  success  of  the  attack  depends  upon  the 
conceahng  of  what  is  done,  for  if  it  is  not 
concealed  the  man  attacked  will  know  what 
is  coming  and  act  accordingly. 

There  should  be  a  point,  thrust,  and  lunge 
to  every  stage  conversation;  three  distinct 
steps  blended  into  one.  First  the  actor  re- 
ceives the  words;  second  he  "judges"  them; 
third  he  replies  to  them.  Thus  when  another 
character  speaks  to  us  there  should  be  some 
suggestion  that  we  are  taking  in  his  meaning 
as  he  goes  along,  some  suggestion  that  we  are 
hearing  his  words  for  the  first  time.  Next 
there  should  be  some  sort  of  momentary  hesi- 
tation, as  though  we  were  forming  our  reply, 
for  the  first  time.  Then  we  should  give  our 
reply.  But  no  one  watching  us  should  be 
conscious  of  the  three  steps;  as  in  the  case  of 
the  fencer  our  success  depends  upon  the 
conceahng  of  our  technique.  If  we  school 
ourselves  into  this  method — as  the  fencer 
schools  himself  in  his — so  that  it  becomes 
second  nature  to  us,  so  that  we  ourselves  are 
scarcely  conscious  of  the  three  separate  steps,  ■ 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING        117 

we  overcome,  to  a  great  extent,  the  tendency 
to  '*  parrot  "  our  lines,  which  comes  from  long 
repetition.  I  believe  any  actor  could  adopt 
this  method  to  advantage. 

A  qualification,  however,  should  perhaps  be 
added.  There  are  times  when  the  listener 
knows  just  what  the  end  of  the  speech  is  to 
be,  and  the  audience  is  waiting  for  the  re- 
ply which  they  know  will  be  of  a  certain  kind ; 
here  the  listener  must  give  his  answer  almost 
before  the  speech  of  the  other  is  finished,  and 
it  is  evident  our  little  formula  does  not  apply. 
But  such  a  scene  as  this,  where  the  speeches 
often  "  overlap "  each  other,  falls  a  little 
outside  the  scope  of  the  present  discussion. 
In  such  a  scene  there  is  really  little  listening 
done,  that  is  one  actor  does  not  do  most  of 
the  speaking  while  the  other  does  most  of 
the  listening,  both  actors  may  be  said  to  play 
first  fiddle,  while  in  this  chapter  we  are  con- 
cerned with  the  trials  of  the  second  fiddler 
who  must  listen  for  long  periods  to  others 
and  yet,  somehow,  keep  in  his  character  and 
sustain  illusion. 


118  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

The  whole  question  of  effective  listening 
to  more  or  less  dull  material,  then,  may  be 
said  to  resolve  itself  into  the  problem  of  sub- 
merging oneself  in  the  part  and  remaining 
in  it,  throughout  the  dull,  as  well  as  the 
spirited,  portions  of  the  play.  I  have  found 
that  it  helps  me  to  do  this  if,  during  re- 
hearsals, I  can  study  out  Hnes  for  myself  to 
think  while  the  other  characters  are  speaking; 
and  if  I  can  force  myself  actually  to  think 
them — the  same  lines — night  after  night,  I 
usually  find  it  easier  to  keep  my  mind  on  the 
story  of  the  play,  and  on  my  connection  with 
it.  The  lines  I  do  speak  then  are,  in  a  way, 
the  outgrowth  of  my  thought,  and  the  effect 
of  the  scene,  speech  by  speech,  upon  me.  It 
seems  to  me  that  this,  in  theory  at  least,  is 
correct,  for  it  tends  to  create  for  the  actor 
himself  the  conditions  through  which  his  char- 
acter is  supposed  to  be  passing. 

I  believe,  also,  that  if  one  can  give  the  audi- 
ence a  rest  from  his  character  at  times,  he 
adds  greatly  to  his  effectiveness.  It  seems 
that  some  actors  never  learn  the  great  value 


THE  ART  OF  DOING  NOTHING       119 

of  this ;  they  insist  on  thrusting  themselves  on 
the  attention  even  when  another  character 
has  the  floor;  but  selfishness  never  pays,  and 
if  we  distract  the  attention  of  the  audience 
from  what  they  want  to  hear,  they  only  re- 
sent the  interference.  If  an  actor  uses  his 
discretion  and  takes  himself  out  of  a  scene 
as  completely  as  he  can — by  turning  his  back, 
or  remaining  perfectly  still — when  it  is  time 
for  him  to  speak  again  he  comes  to  the  audi- 
ence with  added  freshness.  But  in  doing 
this,  naturally,  we  ourselves  must  be  sure  that 
our  thoughts  are  not  allowed  to  wander,  that 
we  are  in  the  scene  though  we  may  not  appear 
to  be  so  to  others. 

There  are  a  great  many  of  these  devices; 
and  they  will  undoubtedly  occur  to  the  per- 
son who  studies  his  part  with  the  purpose 
of  making  the  dull  moments  live.  He  guards 
against  the  tendency  to  slide  over  them  in 
his  thinking,  he  studies  over  and  over  the 
lines  to  which  he  must  listen  and  makes  them 
meaningful  to  himself.  If  the  author  has 
given  him  little  to  work  on,  he  is  able  to 


120  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

delve  into  himself  for  the  vitality  that  will 
make  his  character  live.  He  can  invest  the 
prosiest  bits  with  his  own  imagination,  and 
give  a  tinge  to  them  that  will  shed  light  on 
the  character  he  is  playing.  I  believe  we  even 
come  to  welcome  these  uninteresting  bits,  for 
in  them  it  is  our  own  originality  that  tells. 
It  not  only  brings  satisfaction  to  tackle  and 
solve  the  harder  portions  of  a  part,  but  it  has 
a  great  deal  to  do  with  the  impression  our 
evening's  work  is  to  make.  For  the  audience, 
on  leaving  the  theater,  think  of  an  actor's 
performance  as  a  whole,  they  do  not  think 
only  of  his  great  moments.  Unconsciously 
there  is  a  flash  back  over  the  entire  portrayal 
he  has  given,  the  small  things  he  did  at  the 
beginning  when  they  were  first  getting  an 
insight  into  his  character,  assemble  them- 
selves; and  if  the  actor  has  been  consistent 
they  feel  the  logic  of  it  all.  It  pays,  then, 
to  build  conscientiously  from  first  to  last,  to 
spend  as  much  energy  on  the  arid  stretches  as 
on  the  fertile. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  EMOTIONS 

All  Acting  Is  Emotional,  and  All  Actors  Must  Be 
Capable  of  Projecting  the  Primary  Emotions — Trick- 
ing an  Audience — Sir  Herbert  Tree's  Finesse — In 
Called  Back — His  Artifice  in  Trilby — In  Jim  the  Pen- 
man— His  Wolsey's  Falseness — We  Must  Draw  Our 
Interpretation  Solely  from  the  Author's  Lines — Tree's 
Shylock  Saved  by  a  Trick — Coquelin's  Cyrano  Merely 
Make-believe — Ristori's  Comment  on  Rachel — Should 
We  Literally  Feel  the  Emotions  We  Portray? — 
Irving's  Opinion,  and  Ellen  Terry's — Guiding  One- 
self Through  the  Impassioned  Speeph — Crescendo  of 
Emotion — Beginning  Gently — Nervousness  Often  a 
Good  Thing— Othello's  Emotion— The  "  After-swell  " 
— Ignoring  the  Audience. 

IT  may  be  said  that  all  acting  is  emotional. 
Of  course  there  is  a  wide  range  in  the 
intensity  of  the  emotion  expressed  in  the 
various  scenes  of  any  given  play;  but  unless 
a  scene  is  expressive  of  some  emotion  of  some 
kind,  it  can  scarcely  be  a  dramatic  scene. 
Using  the  word  emotion  in  this  broad  sense, 

121 


122  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

I  mean  that  any  scene  with  the  power  of 
quickening  the  pulse  of  the  auditor — what- 
ever be  its  appeal — is  emotional. 

Therefore  it  would  seem  indispensable  that 
every  actor  should  have  the  power  of  express- 
ing the  primary  emotions  of  grief,  anger,  fear, 
despair,  humor,  love,  desire,  hope.  He  should 
Tiave  the  power  of  projecting  these  emotions 
over  the  footlights,  which  means  that,  in  the 
beginning,  his  own  nature  must  respond  to 
them.  The  lack  of  this  power  has  been  the 
explanation  of  many  a  failure  in  the  profes- 
sion. I  have  always  believed  that  the  extent 
to  which  an  actor  moves  and  convinces  his 
audience  is  determined  by  his  ability  to  por- 
tray the  deeper  feelings,  the  hidden  emotions, 
the  soul  within  and  behind  the  words  he 
speaks.  And  the  test  comes  in  his  ability  to 
give  this  portrayal  purely  and  simply  on  his 
own  merits,  with  no  accessories  of  make-up 
and  costume  to  aid  him;  simply  by  his  power 
of  himself  feeling  the  emotions  of  his  part,  | 
and  making  the  audience  feel  and  appreciate 
and  believe  in  their  genuineness. 


THE  EMOTIONS  123 

The  actor  who  really  moves  audiences — 
to  laughter  or  tears — does  not  trick  them;  he 
himself  feels  keenly  the  various  emotions  he 
seeks  to  express,  his  task  is  to  inoculate 
his  hearers  with  the  same  emotion;  to  do  this 
he  resorts  to  technical  methods  which  are  cal- 
culated to  aid  him  in  projecting  his  emo- 
tions, but  the  great  mistake  often  made  by 
the  beginner  is  that  he  regards  these  tech- 
nical devices  as  the  whole  of  acting.  He 
regards  acting  as  make-believe;  and  that  is 
an  attitude  of  mind  that  the  novice  should  rid 
himself  of  as  speedily  as  possible,  for  it  is 
inimical  to  the  development  of  the  more  vital 
faculty — that  of  really  feeling  the  emotions 
of  his  part. 

I  have  known  only  one  man  who  succeeded 
on  the  stage  without  this  faculty,  that  man 
was  Sir  Herbert  Tree.  I  should  say  that  he 
found  it  such  an  effort  to  put  his  soul  into 
the  mood  of  his  characters  that  he  simply 
did  not  bother  to  try  it  seriously.  At  a  per- 
formance, here  and  there,  I  have  seen  him 
inject  a  certain  amount  of  true  feeling  into 


124  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

his  work,  but  this  was  rare;  I  am  rather  in- 
clined to  believe  that  he  despised  the  primi- 
tive and  simple  in  most  things  artistic.  In 
my  opinion,  he  reached  his  fame  by  means  of 
a  wonderful  finesse.  He  clung  to  this  finesse 
and  superficial  cleverness  of  his  throughout 
his  career.  In  some  characters  this  pro- 
duced admirable  results;  in  others,  like  Shy- 
lock,  Othello,  Macbeth,  and  Wolsey,  it  did 
not.  It  should  be  said  that  Tree  came  into 
the  profession  at  a  time  when  actors  consid- 
ered that  nothing  but  the  bald,  primitive  emo- 
tions was  necessary.  They  paid  too  little 
attention  to  the  deft  shading  and  the  intimate 
touches  which  make  a  character  rounded  and 
individual.  Tree,  in  playing  Macari  in  Called 
Back,  for  instance,  illumined  his  impersona- 
tion with  little  movements  of  the  hands,  he 
twirled  his  mustache  in  the  Italian  manner 
(Macari  was  an  Italian),  he  flicked  the  ash 
of  his  cigarette,  and  did  countless  other  tiny 
things  which  came  as  a  revelation  to  the 
actors  and  audiences  of  the  time  and  which 
were  received  with  enthusiasm.     It  was  his 


THE  EMOTIONS  125 

first  great  success  and  he  did  indeed  give  a 
most  lifelike  picture  of  Macari.  His  facial 
make-up  was  perfect,  his  facial  play  was  per- 
fect, his  suggestion  of  callousness  all  combined 
to  make  a  tremendously  vital  performance. 

The  same  was  true  of  his  Svengali  in 
Trilby,  But  when  the  stress  of  powerful 
emotion  came  in  this  play  he  fell  far  below 
the  standard  he  had  reached  in  the  quieter 
portions.  We  realized  that  he  was  circum- 
venting the  real  thing  by  artifice.  This  was 
illustrated  in  the  death  of  his  Svengali.  He 
had  missed  the  fervor  of  the  Jewish  prayer 
entirely,  it  seemed  to  me,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  he  had  sought  to  make  it  impressive  by 
speaking  it  in  Hebrew.  Then  when  he  came 
to  the  moment  of  death,  with  the  audience 
clearly  little  moved,  he  fell  across  a  table  with 
his  head  hanging  over  the  edge,  so  that  those 
in  the  theater  saw  it  upside  down  with  the 
eyes  staring  weirdly  in  death.  This  artifice 
did  succeed,  and  was  regarded  by  many  as 
a  piece  of  great  acting! 

In  Jim  the  Penman  he  employed  a  peculiar 


126  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

little  trick  which  disguised  his  lack  of  real 
feeling.  He  was  playing  the  Baron  in  that 
piece,  and  when  Jim  lay  dead  in  the  chair 
Tree  had  to  make  the  audience  realize  that 
he  knew  the  forger  was  dead.  The  usual 
actor  would  have  looked  into  the  face  of  the 
dead  man,  and  by  means  of  his  own  facial 
expression  and  gesture  would  have  conveyed 
his  realization  of  the  death.  But  Tree  did 
not  use  his  face  at  all,  he  simply  walked  to 
the  dead  body  in  the  most  callous,  almost 
unconcerned  way,  passed  his  hand  over  the 
dead  man's  brow,  and  coolly  wiped  the  death 
sweat  off  his  hand  onto  his  coat.  This  pro- 
ceeding made  the  audience  shiver,  as  it  was 
designed  to  do;  but  though  such  pieces  of 
business  are  effective,  anybody  could  do  them, 
and  I  do  not  think  they  can  be  called  great 
acting. 

He  carried  this  trickery  into  his  interpreta- 
tion of  Shakespearian  parts,  and  there  its  in- 
appropriateness  was  plain.  It  was  as  though 
he  realized  that  he  could  not  sound  the  depths 
of  emotion  in  those  giant  parts,  and  so  took 


THE  EMOTIONS  127 

refuge  in  his  finesse.  His  well-known  device 
of  carrying  an  orange  while  playing  Wolsey 
was  surely  a  grave  error.  When  he  first  did 
this  I  heard  people  praising  him  for  his 
cuteness — it  was  the  one  thing  commented 
upon  in  his  performance.  His  idea  was  that 
Wolsey  kept  the  orange  near  his  nostrils  be- 
cause the  scent  of  human  beings  was  so  dis- 
tasteful to  him.  Tree  must  have  rooted  this 
idea  out  of  some  book  on  Wolsey,  and  it  may 
be  that  the  real  Wolsey  did  actually  express 
aversion  for  the  common  herd  in  this  way; 
but  whether  the  orange  is  fact  or  fiction,  it  is 
certainly  true  that  in  Shakespeare's  Wolsey, 
there  is  not  the  slightest  suggestion  of  such  a 
man.  Tree  made  this  excessive  fastidiousness 
Wolsey's  predominant  trait,  it  was  the  one 
thing  dwelt  upon  wherever  his  performance 
was  discussed.  From  an  artistic  point  of  view 
this  was  appalling,  for  Shakespeare's  Wolsey 
was  a  giant  among  men:  a  giant  who,  in  his 
fall  from  high  place,  showed  qualities  that 
made  of  him  a  great  tragic  figure,  a  greater 
man  than  he  ever  was  at  the  zenith  of  his 


128  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

power.  Whether  Tree  was  incapable  of 
portraying  the  tremendous  emotions  of  the 
character  is  a  question;  but  it  is  a  simple  mat- 
ter of  fact  that  he  did  not  portray  them,  that 
he  circumvented  them  by  means  of  this 
orange  device  and  others  as  questionable. 

It  may  be  said  that  he  was  led  away  by 
the  success  of  his  little  trickeries  until  he  lost 
sight  of,  and  lost  belief  in,  the  profounder 
things.  This  is  indeed  a  danger  which  any 
actor  should  realize.  We  are  apt  to  be  de- 
ceived by  a  momentary  success  of  some  in- 
genious little  adornment  we  have  added  to 
our  performance,  and  forget  that  artistic 
progress,  in  the  last  analysis,  depends  upon 
the  straightforward  appeal  we  are  able  to 
make.  If  we  are  able  to  add  to  the  attrac- 
tiveness and  give  point  to  this  appeal  by  bits 
of  finesse,  well  and  good.  Indeed  we  should 
make  each  part  we  play  as  individual  as  we 
can.  This  is  done,  of  course,  by  such  devices 
as  Tree  used.  We  cannot  depend  altogether 
I  upon  the  primitive  unadorned  emotions,  but 
,we  should  never  forget  that  these  emotions 


THE  EMOTIONS  129 

should  be  the  basis  of  everything.  It  is  a 
great  mistake  to  substitute  these  external  em- 
bellishments for  the  real  feeling.  The  two 
must  be  judiciously  blended. 

Again  I  repeat  that  we  must  draw  our 
conception  of  any  character  from  the  au- 
thor's lines;  and  we  must  resist  the  tempta- 
tion to  let  it  be  colored  by  other  knowledge 
we  may  have.  In  the  case  of  a  character  like 
Wolsey,  it  is  an  artistic  misdemeanor  to  go 
to  history  for  our  idea  of  his  nature.  A  play 
is  like  a  painting  or  a  piece  of  sculpture,  it 
is  what  it  is,  it  must  be  its  own  justification, 
its  own  explanation.  Shakespeare  conceived 
and  created  a  clearly  defined,  consistent  man 
in  Wolsey — whether  he  is  the  Wolsey  of  his- 
tory or  not.  It  is  for  the  actor  to  play 
Shakespeare's  Wolsey,  being  guided  alone  by 
Shakespeare's  lines,  otherwise  the  balance  of 
the  play  is  certain  to  suffer. 

The  career  of  Tree  provides  a  fruitful 
theme  for  a  discussion  of  this  kind.  Clever 
man  that  he  was,  he  never  missed  a  chance 
to  appeal  to  the  audience's  love  of  novelty. 


130  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

But  in  many  cases,  there  can  be  no  doubt,  his 
cleverness  spoiled  his  good  work.  I  recall  his 
Shylock,  in  the  great  emotional  scene  with 
Tubal  where  the  old  Jew  runs  the  whole 
gamut  of  hate,  rage,  and  tears.  But  Tree  in 
the  part  left  me  quite  cold.  I  beheve  the 
effect  on  the  audience  would  have  been  negli- 
gible also  if  the  curtain  had  been  brought 
down  upon  the  closing  words  of  Shylock's 
speech,  as  it  customarily  is.  But  Tree  had 
evolved  a  piece  of  business  which  he  tacked 
on  at  the  end  of  the  scene.  He  fell  on  his 
knees  before  the  threshold  of  Shylock's  house, 
and  with  agonized  cries  scraped  ashes  from 
the  ground  and  showered  them  over  his  head. 
The  touch  electrified  the  audience;  and  the 
scene,  which  up  to  this  had  been  flat,  was 
awarded  great  applause.  How  different  to 
this  were  the  Shylocks  of  both  Booth  and 
Jrving!  Those  men  drew  upon  nothing  for 
itheir  effects  except  their  magnificent  power  of 
expressing  great  emotion. 

Tree,  when  playing  Hamlet,  never  got  the 
response  other  actors  had  received  in  his  out- 


THE  EMOTIONS  131 

burst  over  the  grave  of  Ophelia;  but  here  too 
he  was  able  to  cover  his  tracks  and  save  him- 
self.   After  the  scene  was  finished,  and  when  j,pj^A^ 
the  others  had  departed,  he  would  return  tb^l-^^^^,^^^^ 
take  a  last  mournful  look  at  the  dead  body 
of   Ophelia;    and   this   rarely   failed   to   win 
over  the  audience.    And  thus,  throughout  his 
career,  he  concealed  his  natural  shortcomings 
by  resorting  to  more  or  less  ,^^trrlP^^"r^    but     ^ 
always  clever,  artifice. 

I  never  felt  that  Tree  was  full  of  the  emo- 
tion his  character  was  supposed  to  be  feel- 
ing. It  never  seemed  to  me  that  his  inter- 
pretation was  coming  from  the  inside.  This 
was  the  great  fault  with  his  work;  and  it 
may  be  because  of  it  that  he  is  so  often  ac- 
cused of  insincerity  and  falseness. 

I  had  some  such  feehng  also  about  Coque- 
lin's  performance  of  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  (to 
which  I  referred  in  an  earher  chapter).  It 
seemed  to  me  that  Coquelin,  with  all  his  x 
superb  technique,  was  concerning  himself 
merely  with  the  externals  and  superficialities, 
the  visible  attributes  of  Cyrano,  instead  of 


132  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

feeling  him.  I  had  produced  the  play  for 
Sir  Charles  Wyndham,  and  knew  what  fine 
possibilities  there  were  in  the  part.  Coquelin 
never  once  moved  me.  I  did  not  feel  that  he 
ever  put  himself  in  Cyrano's  place,  but  that 
throughout  he  was  playing  at  make-believe. 
Whether  one  should  actually  feel  the  emo- 
tions he  portrays  or  merely  simulate  them  has 
always  been  a  debatable  matter.  Ristori,  in 
contrasting  the  Italian  and  the  French  meth- 
ods, says,  "  Rachel  was  a  tragic  genius  of 
France,  but  we  followed  two  widely  differ- 
ent schools.  We  had  two  different  modes  of 
expression.  She  could  excite  the  greatest  en- 
thusiasm in  her  transports,  so  beautiful  was 
her  diction,  so  statuesque  her  pose.  In  the 
most  passionate  situations,  however,  her  ex- 
pression was  regulated  by  the  rules  imposed 
by  the  traditional  French  schools.  We,  on 
the  contrary,  do  not  believe  that  in  cul- 
minating passion  this  self-possession  is  pos- 
sible." Those  were  Ristori's  words,  but  the 
difference  between  the  two  is  not  so  marked 
as  might  appear  on  the  surface.    For  my  part 


i 


THE  EMOTIONS  133 

I  do  not  agree  with  the  "  rules  imposed  by 
the  French  school";  but  neither  do  I  believe 
that  in  "  culminating  passion  "  Ristori  ever 
lost  her  self-possession.  She  was,  I  think, 
the  greatest  tragedienne  I  have  ever  seen.  I 
shall  never  forget  her  performance  of  Marie 
Antoinette.  Her  rage  was  terrific,  but  the 
next  moment  she  was  able  to  clasp  her  son  to 
her  heart  and  speak  in  accents  of  the  most 
touching  grief.  To  make  this  sharp  transi- 
tion of  mood  she  must  have  retained  great 
control,  after  all.  Ristori  herself  tells  of  what 
I  believe  to  be  the  only  occasion  on  which  her 
passion  carried  her  away  to  the  extent  that 
she  did  not  realize  what  she  was  doing.  At 
the  end  of  her  tremendous  scene  she  advanced 
several  steps  toward  the  audience  and  fell 
exhausted  near  the  footlights,  and  was  only 
saved  from  being  burned  by  the  presence  of 
mind  of  someone  from  the  audience  who 
pushed  her  inanimate  body  out  of  danger. 

But  after  all  is  it  ever  really  possible  for 
an  actor  literally  to  feel  the  passions  he  por- 
trays?    There  are  times  when  he  must  ap- 


t 


134  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

pear  so  blinded  with  rage  that  he  must  com- 
mit murder;  can  that  passion  be  hterally  felt 
by  the  actor?  It  seems  to  me  that  all  pas- 
|sion  must  be  kept  under  a  certain  control 
and  within  the  pale  of  art.  It  is  also 
evident  that  to  retain  this  control  of 
necessity  grows  more  difficult  as  the  actor 
gains  in  his  power  of  expressing  great  pas-  | 
sion.  In  the  beginning  it  is  easy  to  remain 
master  of  our  resources,  because  they  are  not 
vast;  but  the  actor  who  has  trained  his  whole 
being,  his  voice,  his  face,  his  muscles  until 
they  are  capable  of  great  power,  finds  the 
problem  of  control  and  discretion  one  which 
requires  a  keen  sense  of  dramatic  values  and 
proportion,  and  a  strong  exertion  of  the  will 
at  times  to  carry  out  what  he  knows  is  the 
proper  course.  In  the  rehearsing  we  may  do 
in  private  it  is  perhaps  well  to  give  way  to 
uncontrolled  passion  to  develop  our  powers 
of  expressing  it;  but  while  acting  we  must  al- 
^  ways  remain  master  of  our  resources. 

An  actor  once  told  me  that  when  he  was 
playing  with  the  great  Jefferson  he  was  so 


THE  EMOTIONS  135 

affected  by  the  brilliant  man's  work  during 
one  of  the  scenes  that  his  face  was  suffused 
with  tears.  Jefferson  called  him  into  his 
dressing-room  after  the  act  and  said,  "  You 
mustn't  cry  on  the  stage.  Make  your  audi- 
ence do  that.  If  you  do  not  control  yourself 
how  can  you  expect  to  control  your  audience?  " 
The  latter  part  of  this  advice  no  one  can  take 
exception  to,  but  always  to  repress  one's  tears 
is  another  matter.  Ellen  Terry,  in  her  fin- 
est parts,  wept  copiously  and  so  did  her  audi- 
ence. She  was  able  to  allow  herself  to  be 
moved  by  the  pathos  of  the  story,  yet  to 
control  herself  and  her  audience  at  the  same 
time.  Jefferson  was  right  and  Miss  Terry 
was  right,  but  because  they  were  what  they 
were  they  got  their  effects  in  different 
ways. 

Guiding  oneself  through  the  impassioned 
moment  is  much  like  striking  the  ball  on  the 
golf  links.  I  once  asked  a  professional  golfer, 
James  Braid,  how  much  strength  he  used  in 
driving.  "  I  hit  as  hard  as  I  can,"  was  his 
innocent-sounding  reply.    With  this  advice  I 


136  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

laid  down  several  balls  and  whacked  at  them 
for  all  I  was  worth.  They  shot  to  right  and 
left,  straight  up  in  the  air,  or  went  bounding 
along  the  ground.  Even  those  I  did  manage 
to  hit  fair  went  only  about  a  hundred  yards. 
Mr.  Braid  had  neglected  to  tell  me  that  he 
held  his  club  in  a  certain  way,  that  he  "  ad- 
dressed "  the  ball  in  a  certain  way,  that  he 
apphed  his  full  strength  only  at  a  carefully- 
timed  moment.  He  could  indulge  himself  by 
slamming  the  ball  with  all  his  strength  be- 
cause he  knew  his  swing  would  be  governed 
by  the  technique  he  had  drilled  into  himself. 
Thus,  indeed,  it  is  with  acting.  Ristori 
was  able  to  throw  her  whole  passionate  soul 
into  her  emotional  scenes,  because  she  knew 
quite  well  her  technique  could  not  desert  her. 
It  should  be  pointed  out,  too,  that  there 
are  ways  and  ways  of  throwing  one's  whole 
soul  into  a  strong  speech.  The  speech  of  Con- 
stance in  King  John  is  charged  with  intense 
passion.     She  cries: 

"  Arm,  arm,  you  Heavens, against  these  perjured  kings! 
A  widow  cries !     Be  husband  to  me,  Heavens !  " 


THE  EMOTIONS  137 

These  two  lines  the  actress  may  give  with  all 
her  power.    Then  come  the  lines: 

"  Let  not  the  hours  of  this  ungodly  day 
Wear  out  the  days  in  peace;  but  ere  sunset 
Let  armed  discord  'twixt  these  perjured  kings ! 
Hear  me !     Oh,  hear  me !  " 

After  pouring  out  those  first  two  lines 
in  a  flood  of  passion,  the  skilful  actress  would 
pause,  and  appear  transfixed ;  she  would  make 
a  complete  break.  This  would  be  thrilhng  to 
the  audience,  preparing  them  for  what  is  to 
follow;  and  the  words,  when  they  do  come, 
have  acquired  a  deeper,  more  terrible  signifi- 
cance. And  incidentally  the  actress  has  re- 
gained control  of  herself.  Then  she  speaks 
again,  substituting  for  the  force  of  the  pre- 
ceding hnes  an  intensity  which,  in  contrast,  is 
just  as  moving  but  which  puts  no  tax  on  her 
physical  powers.  She  speaks  each  word 
clearly  and  slowly,  pausing  often,  thus: 

"  Let  .  .  .  not  .  .  .  the  hours  ...  of  this  .  .  .  un- 
godly day   ..." 

And  so  on  to  the  end,  gradually  increasing 
both  pace  and  power  till  "Hear  me!     Oh, 


138  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

hear  me!"  is  given  with  enormous  tragic 
force.  But  an  untrained  actress  would  be 
likely  to  attempt  to  keep  up  the  whirlwind 
of  the  beginning  of  the  speech  straight 
through  to  the  end.  The  result  might  well 
be  that  she  would  "  pump  "  her  lungs  and 
exhaust  her  strength. 

There  is,  also,  a  deeper  technical  principle 
involved  in  such  a  delivery  of  such  a  speech: 
that  is  the  anticipation  of  emotion.  When 
Constance  pauses  before  uttering  her  curse, 
we  are  prepared  for  what  is  to  come.  In  a 
broader  sense  this  anticipation  apphes  to  a 
play  as  a  whole.  In  the  early  scenes  of  a 
play  all  of  the  emotion  should  be  of  an  in- 
troductory, preparatory  nature.  In  good 
plays  it  is;  and  it  is  the  actor's  part  to  treat 
the  emotion  in  the  early  acts  of  a  play  from 
that  point  of  view.  In  Othello's  speech  in 
the  second  act  we  get  an  example  of  this 
foreshadowing: 

"  If  I  once  stir  or  do  but  lift  this  arm  the  best  of  you 
shall  sink  in  my  rebuke." 

This  speech  indicates  that  Othello  is  cap- 


THE  EMOTIONS  139 

able  of  great  emotion,  though  so  far  in  the 
play  he  has  not  displayed  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  Shakespeare's  play 
Cymhelme  a  totally  different  technique  is 
used  by  the  author,  and  consequently  must  be 
used  by  the  actor.  Instead  of  foreshadowing 
in  this  play,  Shakespeare  lets  the  emotion 
of  the  heroine  come  as  a  surprise;  for  we  do 
not  think  of  her  as  anything  but  a  gentle  crea- 
ture, incapable  of  great  transports,  until  the 
moment  of  stress  comes.  We  see  Imogene, 
the  heroine,  a  gentle  dainty  lady,  mild,  and 
kind.  That  is  carried  through  consistently 
with  regard  to  her,  until  she  looks  on  the  body 
of  her  murdered  husband.  Then  her  pent-up 
fury  and  despair  blaze  forth.  When  I  saw 
this  part  played  by  Helen  Faucit  her  out- 
burst came  as  a  glorious  surprise  to  the  audi- 
ence because,  in  a  way,  we  were  quite  un- 
prepared for  it.  In  a  deeper  sense,  however, 
we  had  been  prepared  for  it  by  the  skilful  act- 
ing. The  mere  fact  that  we  were  given  the 
gentler  side  of  the  character  first  acted  as  a 
subtle  preparation  for  the  revelation  of  the 


140  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

other  side,  which  came  with  all  the  more 
force.  Modjeska,  when  she  played  Odette^ 
employed  this  method.  In  the  first  act  we 
have  seen  her  as  a  dehghtful,  witty  hostess; 
then  comes  the  peculiar  thrill,  the  strange 
surprise  when  she  cries,  "Coward!"  to  her 
husband  at  the  end  of  the  act.  Thus  we  are 
always  preparing  for  the  emotional  moment; 
but  sometimes  it  is  better  to  do  it  by  fore- 
shadowing, sometimes  by  arranging  it  as  a 
surprise. 

The  foregoing  plainly  implies,  I  think,  that 
the  emotion  in  a  play  must  be  a  matter  of 
crescendo  of  one  kind  or  another.  And  since 
^  the  play  must  be  cumulative  in  its  effect  it 
follows  that  the  individual  characters  must 
reveal  their  emotions  with  a  certain  cautiously 
graded  increase  of  intensity.  Power  of  voice, 
stirring  action,  suffering  should  be  adjusted 
to  the  rise  of  the  play.  They  should  not  be 
thrust  into  the  early  portions  while  the  audi- 
ence are  becoming  acquainted  with  the  per- 
sons, and  while  their  interest  is  being  fostered 
and  guided.    If  the  author  has  written  power 


THE  EMOTIONS  141 

into  the  first  act  he  has  handicapped  his 
actors.  The  strength  of  any  play,  if  it  is 
written  properly,  lies  in  its  chmax — usually 
in  the  third  or  fourth  act.  All  the  power 
possible  must  be  concentrated  into  this  climax. 
The  rise  to  it  should  be  as  gradual  and  gentle 
as  it  is  possible  to  have  it  while  retaining  the 
interest.  If  there  is  passion  in  the  first  act 
the  actors  should  try  to  keep  it  in  the  realm 
of  suggestion;  it  should  not  be  portrayed  out- 
right. That  is,  there  should  be  a  suggestion 
about  all  strong  acting  in  the  earlier  scenes 
that  things  are  brewing,  that  stronger  clashes 
are  certain  to  come.  The  suffering  and  pas- 
sion indicated  in  these  preliminary  scenes 
should  imply  that  the  character  is  affected 
more  by  the  anticipation  of  what  is  likely  to 
come  out  of  it  all,  than  by  what  is  actually 
taking  place. 

The  first  act  is,  after  all,  explanatory  and 
introductory.     The  acting  also  should  be  ex- 
planatory  and  introductory.      The    audience  ?  tP^  ' 
are  getting  acquainted  with  the  people  in  the 
play;   and   until  they   know   them   and   feel 


142  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

with  them  and  for  them  they  can  never  be 
greatly  stirred  by  their  woes  or  joys.  When 
the  curtain  goes  up  the  audience  are  thrown 
into  a  strange  world  whose  people  are  quite 
strangers  to  them.  Naturally  at  the  begin- 
ning of  any  play  the  audience  are  cold.  They 
are  critical,  waiting  to  see  what  they  are  to 
get  for  the  money  they  have  spent.  To  ap- 
peal to  them  successfully  the  author  and  the 
actors  must  go  gently.  The  characters  should 
be  allowed  to  expand  slowly  so  that  the  audi- 
ence are  not  given  too  much  to  digest  at  once. 
We  should  not  be  afraid  of  losing  their  in- 
terest at  the  beginning  of  the  first  act.  They 
are  quite  ready  to  be  interested — they  hope 
they  haven't  wasted  their  money — but  first 
they  must  understand;  little  things  will  in- 
terest them  if  they  are  given  time  to  grasp 
them.  I  never  believe  much  in  using  the 
sledge  hammer  with  an  audience,  or  bluster- 
ing at  them,  and  putting  in  "  punch  "  at  the 
start.  That  is  likely  to  be  merely  confusing. 
It  is  wisest  to  assume  that  any  audience 
will  need  warming  up,   and  this  cannot  be 


THE  EMOTIONS  143 

/  done  in  a  huriy.  They  must  be  coaxed  along. 
When  a  man  is  frostbitten  we  do  not  pour 
hot  water  on  him,  we  rub  him  with  ice. 
We  begin  at  his  own  temperature  and  gradu- 
ally warm  him  back  to  normal.  I  think  this 
applies  to  an  audience.  By  all  means  the 
actors  and  the  audience  must  start  together 
if  they  are  to  finish  together.  If  the  play 
takes  a  leap  at  the  rise  of  the  curtain  and 
smashes  along  to  the  end  of  the  first  act,  the 
audience  will  be  unable  to  keep  up  because 
they  have  not  received  a  fair  start.  When  an 
engine  driver  starts  his  train  he  doesn't  jam 
on  full  steam  at  once;  if  he  did  he  would 
probably  jerk  his  engine  off  the  rails. 

I  think  it  is  often  a  good  thing  if  a  com- 
pany is  a  little  embarrassed  and  nervous  at 
the  start  of  the  evening.  This  self-conscious- 
ness is  a  sort  of  sensitiveness;  and  the  actors 
are  reaching  out  to  their  audience  and  seeking 
a  common  ground.  Also  the  audience  can 
sense  the  feeling  of  the  actors,  just  as  the 
actors  can  sense  the  feeling  of  the  audience; 
and  if  the  actor  is  inwardly  quaking  in  his 


144  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

shoes  the  audience,  in  a  subtle  way,  are  flat- 
tered and  respond  to  it  with  their  encourage- 
ment and  sympathy.  I  have  seen,  on  the 
other  hand,  an  actor  come  on  the  stage  with 
such  an  air  of  offensive  assurance  that  I 
have  taken  a  dishke  to  him  at  once.  I  have 
been  hypercritical  of  his  work  from  the  out- 
set; he  has  had  to  struggle  throughout  the 
performance  against  the  prejudice  his  own 
attitude  had  roused  in  me. 

I  shall  never  forget  a  certain  performance 
I  took  part  in  once.  There  were  about  four 
hundred  members  of  the  theatrical  profession 
in  the  house,  and  just  before  I  went  on  I 
thought  I  was  going  to  collapse  with  nervous- 
ness. My  knees  knocked  together  and  I 
seemed  to  have  lost  all  control  over  my 
lips  and  tongue.  I  made  a  haggard  attempt 
to  gather  myself  together  and  walked  un- 
steadily on  the  stage.  Afterwards  they  told 
me  that  I  had  never  given  such  a  splendid 
performance  in  my  life.  The  manager  was 
enthusiastic  in  his  praise  of  my  work;  I 
received  hearty  compliments  from  the  rest  of 


THE  EMOTIONS  145 

the  company,  and  generous  applause  from 
the  audience.  I  beheve  the  reason  for  the 
good  impression  I  was  able  to  make  was  the 
caution  with  which  I  had  begun;  my  nervous- 
ness had  caused  me  to  take  every  means  to 
relieve  the  strain  between  the  audience  and 
myself,  to  make  sure  that  I  had  them  with  me 
before  I  proceeded.  Thus  the  crescendo  of 
the  part  was  provided. 

The  necessity  of  allowing  for,  and  prepar- 
ing for,  the  big  moments  is  illustrated  by  the 
part  of  Othello.  That  part  demands  of  the 
actor,  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  acts,  a  power 
of  endurance,  an  intensity  and  rage  of  the 
first  magnitude;  but  it  decidedly  requires  an 
adherence  to  some  of  these  technical  prin- 
ciples if  the  character  is  to  be  realized  as 
Shakespeare  wrote  him.  I  remember  a  per- 
formance of  this  part  in  which  the  actor — 
and  a  good  one  he  was  too  in  many  parts — 
threw  all  his  reserves  into  the  fray  before  he 
reached  the  end  of  the  third  act,  and  had  to 
limp  through  the  fourth  and  fifth  acts  hope- 
lessly exhausted. 


146  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

He  started  in  grand  shape  with  the  lines: 

"  Hold  your  hands. 
Both  you  of  my  inclining,  and  the  rest. 
Were  it  my  cue  to  fight,  I  should  have  known  it 
Without  a  prompter." 

These  he  gave  with  grandeur  and  authority. 
His  speech  to  the  Senate  was  full  of  martial 
tones  and  vigor.  And  in  the  second  act  the 
speech  beginning: 

"  Now,  by  Heaven, 
My  blood  begins  my  safer  guides  to  rule. 
And  passion,  having  my  best  judgment  collied. 
Essays  to  lead  the  way.     If  I  once  stir 
Or  do  but  lift  this  arm,  the  best  of  you 
Shall  sink  in  my  rebuke," 

he  delivered  with  such  force  and  fire  that 
the  audience  rewarded  him  with  great  ap- 
plause. 

On  reaching  the  great  jealousy  scene  in 
the  third  act  he  naturally  tried  to  eclipse  the 
passion  he  had  shown  in  act  two.  He  charged 
his  lines  with  his  greatest  intensity,  added  to 
it  all  the  power  of  his  lungs.  The  result  was 
that  he  shouted  all  his  strength  away,  was 
totally  exhausted  at  the  end,  and  was  saved 


THE  EMOTIONS  147 

from  collapse  only  by  the  timelj^  fall  of  a 
merciful  curtain. 

j  The  audience  applauded;  but  I  think  it  was 
more  in  kindness  than  in  praise,  for  a  man 
close  to  me  turned  to  his  companion  and 
said,  "Poor  fellow,  didn't  he  work  hard?" 
The  curtain  was  kept  down  twenty  minutes 
in  order,  no  doubt,  to  give  the  poor  Othello 
a  chance  to  recover  himself;  but  for  the  rest 
of  the  play  he  was  a  beaten  man,  and  though 
he  struggled  manfully  and  though  the  audi- 
ence, realizing  the  great  effort  he  was  mak- 
ing, indulgently  gave  him  every  assistance 
with  their  applause,  the  last  two  acts  were 
wretchedly  given.  And  when  the  curtain  fell 
the  audience  dispersed  more  in  sorrow  than 
in  anger.  This  actor  had  a  fine  artistic  tem- 
perament, so  fine  possibly  that  he  felt  he 
could  not  allow  his  art  to  associate  with  such 
a  humble  mechanic  as  technique — and  his  art 
suffered  lamentably  in  consequence.  a 

His  failure  was  due  to  the  fact  that  he  had 
ignored  the  need  of  crescendo  in  the  portrayal 
of  Othello's  emotion.     He  would  have  seen 


148  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

otherwise  that  all  the  first  act  needed  was 
quiet  dignity;  that  the  speech  in  the  second 
beginning, 

"If  I  once  stir  .    .    ." 

required  only  a  suggestion  of  restrained 
power.  The  fury  in  the  third  act  he  would 
have  tempered  with  a  certain  amount  of  re- 
straint, and  not  have  punished  his  throat  by 
shouting  constantly.  If  he  had  allowed  him- 
self to  be  led  by  these  technical  rules,  his 
natural  abilities  would  have  enabled  him  to 
give  a  really  good  performance,-  for  he  was 
well-built,  had  a  good  voice,  and  was  very 
good-looking. 

In  Othello,  though  the  climax  of  the  fury 
is  reached  in  the  third  act,  the  intensity  is 
inexorably  mounting  higher  and  higher.  The 
terrible  phase  of  passion  that  Othello  has 
passed  through  has  weakened  him  physically 
as  well  as  mentally;  and  it  is  in  this  that  we 
are  able  to  sense  with  fresh  clearness  the 
depths  through  which  he  has  passed.  Indeed 
all  great  emotion  may  be  likened  to  a  storm 


THE  EMOTIONS  149 

at  sea.  Just  as  a  great  storm  leaves  an  after- 
swell,  so  must  an  actor  indicate,  by  his 
reaction  after  the  stress,  how  great  the  stress 
has  been.  He  must  not,  in  other  words,  al- 
low his  emotion  to  vanish  too  rapidly.  The 
effect  of  a  passionate  outburst  will  be  ruined 
if  the  actor  throws  away  the  emotion  en- 
tirely as  he  passes  into  the  next  incident  of 
the  play. 

As  an  example  of  this  after-swell  we  may 
take  Antony's  speech  over  the  dead  body  of 
Caesar.  His  soliloquy  finishes  with  a  tre- 
mendous outburst  of  rage.  Then  follows  the 
lines  to  the  servant, 

"You  serve  Octavius  Caesar,  do  you  not?" 

This  is  an  unemotional  line;  but  in  it,  and 
indeed  through  to  the  end,  Antony  continues 
to  show  the  effects  of  the  preceding  rage. 

I  remember  Booth  as  Bertuccio  in  A  Fool's 
Revenge,     In   that   part   he   had   a    similar 
speech  of  rage.     The  rage  itself  was  moving 
enough,  but  Booth  made  it  stronger  by  show-      /. 
ing  carefully  the  after-effects  of  it.     After 


150  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

pouring  out  the  torrent  of  words,  he  paced 
back  and  forth  across  the  stage  as  though 
to  regain  control  of  himself.  He  always 
gave  a  peculiar  little  shudder  and  twist  to  his 
body,  which  indicated  eloquently  that  the  rage 
was  still  seething  in  his  heart.  It  was  at  this 
point  that  the  audience  were  moved  to  ap- 
plause; it  was  here  that  the  situation  was 
brought  home  to  them  in  its  fullest  force.  It 
was  comparable  with  the  ground  swell  after 
the  storm.  If  we  had  not  seen  that  his  rage 
was  still  in  him,  after  he  had  spoken  the 
words,  the  effect  of  his  passion  would  have 
been  lost. 

All  of  this,  it  seems  to  me,  yields  a  simple 
technical  rule: -in  emotional  acting  we  must 
be  imbued  with  the  emotion  we  express,  we 
must,  to  a  certain  extent,  blind  ourselves 
to  everything  but  those  emotions.  Only  in 
this  way,  it  is  clear,  can  we  observe  the  va- 
rious laws  which  we  have,  I  hope,  glimpsed 
through  this  discussion.  We  must,  that  is 
to  say,  be  largely  oblivious  of  the  fact  that 
we  are  playing  before  an  audience.     I  think 


THE  EMOTIONS  151 

it  is  quite  possible  to  be  utterly  oblivious  of 
the  people  in  the  theater.  In  my  younger 
days  when  I  toured  England  playing  such 
parts  as  Othello,  Shy  lock,  Macbeth,  etc.,  I 
found  that  I  was  always  able  to  do  better 
work  when  the  audiences  were  small,  so  that 
the  interruptions  in  the  way  of  applause  were 
few  and  far  between.  I  have  often  found 
myself  literally  forgetting  that  there  were 
an  audience,  and  thoroughly  soaking  myself 
in  my  impersonation.  This  can  be  done — 
and  profitably — in  tragedy;  but  in  comedy, 
curiously  enough,  quite  the  opposite  is  true. 


A 


> 


CHAPTER  VIII 
MAKING  AN  AUDIENCE  LAUGH 

Audience  Must  Be  Taken  into  Partnership  in  Comedy 
— The  Comedian  Must  Sense  His  Audience — Allow- 
ing for  the  Laugh — Letting  the  Audience  Have  Its 
Head;  Major  Barbara — Making  Them  Save  up  Their 
Laughter — There  Can  Be  Too  Much  Laughter  in  a 
Play — Shaw's  Request — Remaining  Unconscious  of 
Our  Own  Humor — To  Be  Infectious  Any  Emotion 
Must  Come  from  the  Inside,  Not  from  the  Lines 
Alone. 

WHEREAS  in  tragedy  it  is  often  well 
to  ignore  the  audience  so  far  as 
possible,  in  comedy  the  actor  must 
take  his  audience  into  partnership.  He  must 
always  be  conscious  of  them,  and  of  their 
changing  moods.  He  has  to  lead  them  at 
times  and  give  them  the  rein  at  others.  A 
true  comedian  manages  his  audience  as  a 
good  rider  manages  a  high-spirited  horse. 
And  here  again  the  principle  of  crescendo 
applies.    A  comedian,  if  he  is  a  good  one,  is 

152 


MAKING  AN  AUDIENCE  LAUGH      153 

very  careful  to  get  on  cordial  terms  with  his 
audience  before  he  tries  any  of  his  clever 
tricks.  If  a  man  playing  an  exaggerated 
character  part  bursts  on  the  stage  and  show- 
ers his  whole  bag  of  tricks  on  his  audience 
in  the  first  few  minutes,  he  only  succeeds 
in  making  himself  irritating.  His  antics  are 
regarded  as  simply  grotesque  and  strained, 
because  the  audience  have  not  been  made 
acquainted  with  him  beforehand.  But  if 
he  keeps  a  rein  on  his  comedy  until  the  third 
act  is  in  full  swing,  and  then  gets  into  full 
swing,  the  audience  are  in  full  swing  with  him 
and  ready  to  laugh  at  anything  he  may  do. 
So  often  audiences  will  accept  in  the  third 
act  what  they  would  resent  in  the  first. 

There  is  great  value  in  sensing  an  audi- 
ence, of  feeling  keenly  their  mood,  of  feeling 
their  response  to  what  we  say.  So  it  is 
clearly  essential  that  the  actor  must  keep 
control  over  himself,  and  over  his  audience 
at  the  same  time.  Such  a  statement  as  this, 
however,  should  not  be  misunderstood;  it 
does  not  mean  that  everything  we  do  must 


154  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

be  coldly  calculated.  A  great  comedian, 
confident  of  his  own  powers  and  sure  of 
his  audience,  is  able  to  play  with  abandon  and 
enthusiasm  and  sweep  his  auditors  along  with 
him ;  but  before  he  does  this  he  will  make  very 
sure  of  his  ground.  I  think  the  great  come- 
dian depends  for  this  peculiar  knowledge 
partly  upon  that  intuitive  sensitiveness  that 
is  part  of  the  actor's  temperament,  but  a 
great  deal  more  upon  his  mastery  of  tech- 
nique. 

For  instance,  if  the  audience  laugh  at  the 
end  of  A's  speech,  B  must  carefully  time  his 
reply.  He  must  not  speak  while  the  laugh 
is  going  on,  and  he  must  not  wait  too  long 
for  it  to  die.  He  must  allow  just  enough 
time  for  the  laugh  to  reach  its  height,  then 
judiciously  weave  it  into  his  next  lines  so 
that  there  is  no  break,  so  that  the  enjoyment 
does  not  subside  entirely  but  is  allowed  to 
taper  off  through  his  own  speech.  If  there 
is  no  laugh  at  the  end  of  A's  speech,  as  B 
expects  there  will  be,  the  latter  must  guard 
against  an  awkward  pa1S*?r*    He  may  begin 


'^v*   *  . 


^ 


MAKING  AN  AUDIENCE  LAUGH       155 

,  his  reply  unobtrusively,  in  rather  a  low  tone, 
V  and  let  his  voice  die  if  the  laugh  comes;  then 
when  it  is  time  to  break  into  the  laugh  he 
can  repeat  what  he  has  said. 

As  an  example  of  this,  in  Shaw's  Major 
Barbara,  Barbara  introduces  Bill  to  her  be- 
trothed, Adolphus  Cusins.  The  scene  ends 
with  Bill's  saying  to  Cusins,  "  You  take  my 
tip,  mate,  stop  her  jaw,  or  you'll  die  afore 
your  time.  Wore  out,  that's  what  you'll  be, 
wore  out."  Cusins  is  impressed.  "  I  wonder," 
he  replies.  But  on  the  words  "  wore  out  " 
Bill  has  left  the  stage,  and  his  exit  invariably 
received  a  big  laugh  and  applause.  It  is  thus 
impossible  for  the  actor  playing  Cusins  to 
speak  this  comedy  line,  "  I  wonder,"  through 
the  storm  of  laughter ;  he  must  wait  until  it  is 
dying  down  before  he  can  speak.  But  that 
does  not  mean  that  he  cannot  convey  what  he 
is  thinking,  and  thus  preserve  the  continuity 
of  the  scene.  If  Cusins  rubs  his  chin  reflec- 
tively with  his  drum  stick  while  the  audience 
are  howling  at  Bill,  this  attitude  of  pained 
perplexity  may  even  add  to  the  comedy ;  then 


156  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

his  words,  "  I  wonder,"  come  as  the  culmina- 
tion of  the  doubt  in  his  mind;  and  the  scene 
has  been  unbroken,  though  the  audience  have 
had  their  way  and  laughed  to  their  heart's 
content. 

In  the  same  scene  Cusins  says  to  Under- 
shaft,  Barbara's  father,  "  You  will  have  to 
choose  between  your  rehgion  and  Barbara," 
and  the  father  replies,  "  So  will  you,  my 
friend.  She  will  find  out  that  that  drum  of 
yours  is  hollow."  (Cusins  has  taken  to  play- 
ing the  bass  drum  in  the  Salvation  Army  to 
make  an  impression  on  Barbara.)  Cusins  re- 
torts, "  Father  Undershaft,  you  are  mis- 
taken!" But  sometimes  the  laugh  came  on 
the  word  "hollow,"  sometimes  it  did  not; 
and  Cusins  was  ready  either  way.  He  com- 
menced his  reply  in  a  low  tone,  with  "  Father 
Undershaft  ..."  and  then  stopped  if  the 
audience  laughed;  if  they  did  not  he  repeated 
as  though  to  give  firmness  and  emphasis  to 
his  words,  "Father  Undershaft!  etc."  There 
are  other  ways  of  meeting  such  a  situation, 
but  I  believe  this  is  the  best. 


MAKING  AN  AUDIENCE  LAUGH       157 

In  cases  like  the  foregoing  the  audience  have 
been  allowed  to  have  their  head  more  or  less, 
but  there  are  times  when  it  is  far  better  to 
hold  them  in  check.  There  are  times  when  it  is 
better  to  kill  a  laugh  in  order  to  get  a  bigger 
one  later.  Sometimes  we  can  deliberately  kill 
one,  two,  or  even  three  laughs  and  force  the 
audience  to  bottle  them  up,  until  we  reach  a 
more  humorous  point  still  when  they  all  come 
in  an  explosion  of  mirth  that  is  worth  a  great 
deal  more  than  a  dozen  smaller  laughs.  We 
may  kill  the  laughs  by  hastening  our  reply, 
or  raising  the  voice,  and  generally  speeding 
up  the  scene  so  that  the  audience  will  repress 
their  laughter  in  order  not  to  miss  anything. 

There  is  a  great  deal  in  being  able  to  choose 
the  exact  moment  at  which  it  is  wise  to  break 
into  the  audience's  laughter.  It  is  a  great 
mistake,  as  we  have  seen,  to  let  the  laugh  die 
away  altogether;  but  we  should  also  seek  to 
begin  our  speech  just  when  the  decline  in  the 
intensity  is  beginning.  We  should  break  off 
a  bit  of  the  laugh  each  time.  Sir  Charles 
Wyndham    once    said    to    me,    "  Break    off 


158  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

the  end  of  the  laughs,  and  the  audience  will 
give  you  all  the  bits  welded  together  into 
one  big  laugh  before  the  end  of  the  play." 

Extraordinary  as  it  may  seem  there  may 
he  too  much  laughter  during  a  play's  per- 
formance. Shaw  realized  this  when  he  put 
up  a  notice  in  the  theater  while  we  were  play- 
ing John  Bull's  Other  Island,  begging  the 
audience  not  to  laugh  as  it  disturbed  the  prog- 
ress of  the  play.  This  was  ridiculed  in  the 
papers,  and  put  down  to  Shaw's  eccentricity 
and  desire  for  advertisement;  but  I  think 
Shaw  may  have  been  perfectly  serious.  He 
may  have  felt  that  constant  laughter  tended 
to  make  the  actors  self-conscious;  and  this 
is  often  true.  Also,  at  Shaw's  plays,  there 
are  always  a  few  in  the  audience  who  are 
eager  to  show  the  keenness  of  their  appre- 
ciation of  the  Shavian  wit,  and  who  guffaw  on 
the  slightest  provocation  or  on  no  provoca- 
tion at  all.  Many  plays — Shaw's  especially — 
rely  greatly  on  pace  and  tempo  for  their  best 
results,  and  constant  laughter  does  disturb 
this  tempo.    In  the  case  of  John  Bull,  Shaw's 


MAKING  AN  AUDIENCE  LAUGH       159 

notice  had  a  curious  effect.  The  audience 
bore  the  admonition  in  mind  and  did  refrain 
from  laughing  during  the  whole  of  the  first 
act;  but  as  the  play  proceeded  they  seemed 
to  forget  all  about  it  and  made  up  for  their 
abstinence  by  laughing  all  the  harder  through 
the  other  acts.  ^ 

It  was  Shaw,  too,  who  taught  me  never 
to  show  that  I  was  enjoying  my  own  jokes;/ 
and  the  lesson  should  be  taken  to  heart  by 
many  and  many  of  our  comedians  of  today. 
One  can,  in  a  subsconscious  way,  enjoy  his 
part,  and  be  gratified  at  the  way  it  is  going; 
but  the  moment  he  lets  the  audience  realize 
his  pleasure  his  work  is  certain  to  deteriorate 
in  quahty.  Again  it  is  a  question  of  art  con- 
ceahng  art.  The  moment  we  let  the  audience 
feel  that  we  are  seeing  the  humor  of  our  ac- 
tions they  will  lose  interest;  they  like  to  feel 
it  is  through  their  own  cleverness  that  they 
detect  the  comedy.  This  is  governing  the. 
audience — letting  it  appear  that  we  are  un-' 
conscious  of  the  humor;  and  audiences  love 
to  be  governed  in  this  way.    I  have  heard  of 


160  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

actors  being  told  that,  to  make  the  play  go 
with  a  swing,  they  should  laugh  at  each 
other's  jokes;  and  over  and  over  again  I  have 
seen  an  audience  stop  laughing,  when  this 
was  tried,  and  let  the  actors  do  it  all. 

In  brief  summary,  then,  it  is  wise  in  all 
emotional  parts  to  map  out  each  act  and  ad- 
just our  reading  to  the  general  crescendo 
of  the  play;  to  take  every  precaution  that  our 
lungs  are  saved  from  "  pumping  "  in  the  im- 
passioned moments;  to  realize  that  all  pas- 
sion, if  it  is  to  be  infectious,  must  come  from 
the  inside,  that  the  words  alone  cannot  pro- 
vide it;  to  remember  that  we  should  retain 
control  over  our  audiences,  both  in  tragedy 
and  comedy,  and  conceal  from  them  the  art 
which  produces  our  artistic  results. 


CHAPTER  IX 

"  FUTURES  "  AND  THE  PARADOX  OF  THE 
AMATEUR 

Brilliant  Promise  of  the  Beginner  Often  Unfulfilled — 
Lawrence  Irving's  Grotesque  Early  Work — Henry 
Irving:  a  Prophet  Without  Honor  in  Manchester — 
Barry  Sullivan's  Disastrous  Conservatism — The  Dan- 
gerous Transitional  Stage  Between  the  Amateur  and 
the  Professional — The  "  Sufficiently  Unprofessional  " 
Wisconsin  Players — Acting  Is  Dancing  in  Shackles 
— Exchanging  Intuition  for  Technique — The  Moffat 
Company  and  Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings — Studied  Sim- 
plicity and  Acquired  Naturalness. 

I  DO  not  think  anyone  can  be  long  asso- 
ciated with  the  theatrical  profession  with- 
out becoming  very  cautious  about  form- 
ing opinions  on  the  future  prospects  of  be- 
ginners. In  my  salad  days  when  the  sprouts 
of  judgment  were  vigorous  but  green,  I  had 
no  hesitation  in  forecasting  the  careers  of 
others.  But  as  time  went  on,  and  I  saw  how 
easy  it  was  to  make  mistakes  I  indulged  less 

161 


162  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

and  less  in  this  pleasant  diversion.     I  think 
as  one  gains  in  his  knowledge  of  the  actor's 
art,  he  is  more  and  more  impressed  with  the 
marvels  which  hard  work  and  serious  applica- 
tion will  accomplish.     It  is  not  so  much  the 
/  brilliant  promise  the  beginner  may  show  that 
^  determines  his  career;  it  is  his  unknown  ca- 
pacity for  hard  work,  with  the  provision  of 
course  that  his  hard  work  takes  the  properj 
direction.     Many  a  career  has  begun  with 
flourish,   with   every   promise   of   big  thin^ 
ahead,  and  ended  in  mediocrity ;  many  anothei 
has  begun  inconspicuously,  and  ended  in  a| 
blaze  of  glory. 

One  man  whose  early  work  bore  no  trace 
of  his  future  success  was  Lawrence  Irving. 
When  I  first  knew  him  he  was  very  diligent, 
he  took  immense  pains;  but  there  was  a  dis- 
tortion about  everything  he  did.  I  have  often 
seen  him  at  rehearsal  toiling  away.  He  would 
reach  a  certain  point  of  excellence,  and  I 
would  feel  like  shouting,  "Hold!  Make 
fast! "  But  on  he  would  go.  He  would 
overtrain  himself,  and  end  up  with  his  whole 


"  FUTURES  "  163 

conception  out  of  focus,  fantastic  and  un- 
natural. His  performances,  at  the  beginning 
of  his  career,  reminded  me  of  those  grotesque 
drawings  by  Cruikshank  of  Shakespearian 
scenes,  which  were  so  admired  in  my  youth.  I 
loathed  them  because  I  hated  to  have  my  idea 
of  Shakespeare's  creations  fogged  by  those 
(to  my  eyes)  mussy  caricatures.  Lawrence 
living's  performances  had  the  same  distress- 
ing effect  on  my  mind.  He  was  floundering 
about  with  his  very  clever  brain,  and  his  work 
was  invariably  abnormal  and  overdone.  I 
saw  very  clearly  that  Lawrence  Irving  would 
never  make  an  actor,  that  he  should  stop  at 
once  and  get  into  something  else  before  it 
was  too  late. 

But  a  few  years  later  The  Typhoon  was 
produced,  and  Irving  played  an  important 
part.  Many  and  loud  were  the  praises  I 
heard  of  his  work.  But  I  smiled  to  myself 
and  said  that  I  knew  exactly  how  he  played 
it.  Many  of  my  friends  urged  me  to  go  and 
see  it,  but  I  refused  until  one  of  them  told  me 
that  I  did  not  know  how  he  played  it,  but  that 


164  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

I  should  see  the  play  and  receive  a  lesson. 
I  did  go  then,  and  I  did  receive  a  lesson.  I 
stood  up  and  cheered  him  at  the  end  of  the 
performance.  He  had  harnessed  his  ideas  and 
his  cleverness  at  last.  His  own  judgment 
had  cried,  "  Hold!  Make  fast!  "  and  he  had 
obeyed  the  order.  It  was  a  magnificent  piece 
of  work.  I  had  been  entirely  wrong  about 
him ;  and  after  that  I  was  much  more  reserved 
with  regard  to  my  ideas  of  another's  chance 
of  success.  Lawrence  Irving,  unfortunately, 
lost  his  life  when  the  Empress  of  Ireland 
went  down  in  the  St.  Lawrence  River  in 
1914.  He  was,  there  can  be  no  doubt,  on 
the  threshold  of  a  brilliant  career,  and  his 
death  was  a  genuine  loss  to  the  sta^e. 

But  such  snap  judgments  on  the  abilities  of 
beginners  may  be  the  cause  of  a  great  deal 
of  injustice.  Such  a  hasty  condemnation  on 
the  part  of  a  group  of  people  nearly  drove 
one  actor  out  of  Manchester.  It  was  Henry 
Irving,  father  of  Lawrence.  Here  it  was 
indeed  a  case  of  a  man  returning  to  his  own 
country  and  finding  himself  without  honor. 


"  FUTURES  "  165 

I  happened  to  be  in  Manchester  at  living's 
first  appearance  there  after  having  achieved 
his  fame  in  London.  In  his  novitiate  he  had 
been  a  member  of  the  old  stock  company  of 
Manchester;  and  the  local  playgoers  knew 
him  only  as  a  member  of  that  organization. 
He  had  not  been  a  great  favorite  with  them. 
I  was  at  luncheon  at  the  Brazenose  Club  of 
the  city  when  the  subject  of  Irving  came  up. 
The  members  of  the  club  were  all  supposed 
to  be  patrons  or  lovers  of  things  artistic. 
To  my  great  surprise  one  gentleman  re- 
marked, "  The  idea  of  Irving  coming  here  as 
a  star  when  we  knew  him  in  the  old  stock 
days  as  a  miserable  actor.  He  may  be  good 
enough  for  London,  but  he's  not  good  enough 
for  Manchester."  Perhaps  as  many  as  fifty 
heard  the  remark,  and  of  them  all  there 
was  not  one  dissenting  voice.  That  attitude, 
it  was  clear  at  Irving's  opening  night,  was 
not  confined  to  the  members  of  the  club. 
There  seemed  to  be  a  widespread  and  violent 
prejudice  against  him.  To  his  great  credit  he 
succeeded  in  overcoming  this  to  a  large  ex- 


166  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

tent,  but  it  might  very  well  have  forced  him 
into  failure.  Many  of  the  Mancastrians  ad- 
mitted later  that  they  had  been  wrong  to  feel 
as  they  had.  But  here  was  the  ghost  of  the 
judgment  they  had  formed  years  before  come 
to  haunt  Irving,  who  had  been  working  with 
all  his  energy,  and  with  great  success,  to 
overcome  the  very  faults  they  had  found  with 
him.  For  some,  it  is  true,  he  never  succeeded 
in  overcoming  them.  Many  could  never  see 
any  good  in  his  work  because  his  peculiar 
walk  and  utterance  irritated  them  so  they 
were  incapable  of  admiring  his  good  points. 
He  never  wholly  conquered  these  faults,  but 
in  spite  of  them  he  was  a  brilliant  actor,  as 
his  fame  attests. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  have  made  mistakes, 
ax\d  seen  others  make  them,  with  regard  to 
youths  who  showed  all  the  promise  imaginable 
at  the  start.  One  of  the  most  poignant  in- 
stances of  this  is  referred  to  in  my  mother's 
book,  Siocty-eiglit  Years  on  the  Stage.  It  had 
to  do  with  the  tragedian,  Barry  Sullivan.  In 
speaking  of  him  she  says:  "  There  is  no  doubt 


«  FUTURES  "  167 

that  in  his  youth  he  was  an  admirable  actor. 
He  had  a  fine  presence  and  a  powerful  voice, 
which  he  used  from  the  lowest  note  to  the 
top  of  its  compass.  With  the  enthusiasm  of 
youth  he  had  studied  his  parts  inch  by  inch. 
Every  movement  of  the  body,  every  inflection 
of  the  voice  was — studied!  At  that  time  he 
was  a  success,  and  a  great  one,  but  there  he 
stopped. 

"  The  years  rolled  by.  Many  blemishes  of 
the  old  school  of  acting  were  reformed  not 
'indifferently'  but  'altogether';  but  Barry 
Sullivan  stood  still,  a  fatal  thing  to  a  student 
of  any  art.  He  played  Hamlet  at  forty-five 
just  as  he  had  played  him  at  twenty-eight. 
The  same  stilted  movements,  the  same  mean- 
ingless inflections  had  grown  with  age  into 
mere  mechanism,  for  the  youthful  enthu- 
siasm was  no  longer  there.  For  many  years 
before  his  death  London  absolutely  refused 
to  accept  him.  He  tried  once  or  twice,  but 
each  attempt  ended  disastrously." 

He  failed,  I  believe,  through  over-confi- 
dence.    He  had  been  content  to  rest  on  his 


168  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

laurels.  But  in  his  youth  there  would  have 
been  few  to  predict  that  he  would  not  be  a 
great  actor. 

In  any  career  there  is  sure  to  come  a  turn- 
ing point,  when  a  man  is  either  content  to 
plod  along  the  path  he  knows  well,  or  when 
he  realizes  that  he  must  put  forth  his  best 
energy  and  find  a  harder  and  better  road  if  he 
hopes  to  reach  the  goal  of  his  ambition.  It 
is  a  transitional  stage,  while  we  are  losing 
the  bold  confidence  of  youth;  when  we  be- 
come conscious  of  the  methods  which  have 
been  quite  spontaneous.  That  is  a  dangerous 
period;  and  the  successful  actor  is  the  one 
who  can  come  through  it  still  possessing  his 
spontaneity  and  confidence,  yet  having 
learned  to  harness  them  and  guide  them  de- 
liberately instead  of  by  instinct. 

When  I  was  about  twenty-four  years  of 
age  I  found  myself  in  that  wobbly  state  of 
mind.  My  technique  was  being  given  to  me 
ready-made  by  the  producer  who  insisted  on 
showing  me  how  to  do  things  without  telling 
me  why.    I  was  simply  copying  his  methods. 


"  FUTURES  "  169 

This  was  robbing  me  of  all  freedom  in  my 
work ;  I  felt  that  what  natural  aptitude  I  had 
was  being  smashed.  The  feeling  I  had  had 
for  acting  was  slipping  away  from  me.  I 
was  unable  to  lose  myself  in  the  part  I  might 
be  playing.  An  old  actress,  whom  I  knew 
quite  well  then,  watched  one  of  my  rehearsals 
critically,  and  told  me  afterwards  that  I  had 
mistaken  my  vocation,  that  I  could  never  be 
an  actor,  and  that  if  I  were  wise  I  would 
take  her  advice  and  get  out  of  the  profession. 
I  did  not  follow  her  advice,  but  it  had  the 
effect  of  making  me  take  my  work  and  its 
problems  very  seriously.  I  overcame  that 
lack  of  confidence  in  time;  and  now  I  believe 
it  was  only  a  stage  we  all  must  expect  to 
pass  through. 

I  believe  there  is  a  time  in  every  career 
where  the  amateur  gives  way  to  the  profes- 
sional; when  the  actor  comes  to  regard  acting, 
not  as  an  agreeable  diversion,  but  as  his  busi- 
ness in  life.  This  season  the  "Wisconsin 
Players,"  an  amateur  organization,  appeared 
at  the  Neighborhood  Playhouse  in  New  York 


170  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

for  a  few  performances.  Mr.  Ralph  Block, 
of  the  New  York  Tribune,  made  this  com- 
ment on  their  work :  "  The  acting  was  excel- 
lent and  sufficiently  unprofessional  to  achieve 
the  illusion  of  life  that  the  sharp  edges  of  the 
trained  actor  are  always  successful  in  keeping 
at  arm's  length."  That  was  an  interesting 
comment,  and  no  doubt  true  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent. But  why  is  it  that  these  inexperienced 
young  persons  from  the  West  apparently  suc- 
ceeded in  doing  with  greater  perfection  what 
we  professional  actors  have  spent  our  lives 
in  trying  to  learn?  I  believe  the  answer  sug- 
gests one  of  the  paradoxes  in  the  actor's  pro- 
fession. The  spontaneity,  freshness,  direct- 
ness, and  unself-consciousness  possessed  by 
the  proficient  amateur  are  the  very  qualities 
which  the  professional  seeks  to  gain  by  his 
long  study  and  experience;  yet  they  are  the 
very  qualities  which  that  training  tends  in- 
evitably to  destroy! 

All  professional  actors  begin  as  amateurs 
(whether  they  receive  pay  for  their  work  or 
not) ;  and  most  of  us  have  been  praised,  in 


"  FUTURES  "  171 

our  beginning  days,  for  our  spontaneity  and 
refreshing  naturalness.  Why  do  the  "  sharp 
edges  "  creep  in?  Certain  it  is  that  there  is 
often  a  refreshing  naturalness  about  an  ama- 
teur's work,  and  I  think  that  is  because  his 
work  is  perfectly  natural;  it  is  not  studied. 
But  as  the  amateur  goes  on,  and  makes  act- 
ing his  profession,  he  must  learn  to  know 
just  how  he  gets  his  effects,  he  must  be  able 
to  repeat  them  unerringly.  He  comes  to 
know  the  innumerable  mistakes  he  may  make 
and  how  serious  they  may  be  for  him.  He 
sees  that  acting  is  not  a  parlor  game  but  a 
difficult  mixture  of  science  and  art.  He  be- 
comes appalled  at  the  many  shoals  that  lie  in 
his  treacherous  course.  It  is  pretty  difficult 
through  such  a  time  to  keep  that  beguiling 
air  of  perfect  confidence  which  the  early 
praise  engendered.  He  is  impressed  with 
the  exacting  laws  of  his  calling.  He  is  afraid 
to  let  himself  go.  He,  as  an  amateur,  had 
been  dancing  because  it  was  fun,  he  had 
danced  with  perfect  freedom  and  fine  aban- 
don;  now  he   realizes   that   acting   is   really 


172  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

dancing  in  shackles.  It  is  a  case  of  accepting 
the  rigorous  hmits  and  doing  the  best  he  can 
inside  them.  This  is  hard  until  he  comes  to 
take  the  limits  for  granted.  His  charming 
spontaneity  is  pretty  sure  to  give  way  to 
self -consciousness.  And  that  is  what  I  mean 
by  the  transitional  stage  between  the  ama- 
teur and  the  professional.  Our  young  actor 
must  then  set  himself  to  recapture  that  first 
fine  furious  rapture,  which  is  where  his  real 
initiation  into  the  difficulties  of  his  art  is 
given  him. 

I  think,  when  a  man  becomes  a  professional 
actor,  he  is  constantly  attempting  to  achieve, 
by  means  of  his  technique  and  his  art,  what 
as  an  amateur  he  achieved  by  his  very  lack 
jof  technique  and  art.  He  is  trying  to  simu-  | 
late  a  lack  of  self -consciousness,  which  effort 
in  itself  is  enough  to  make  him  self-conscious! 
As  an  amateur  one's  work  is  not  self-con- 
scious, because  it  is  not  a  conscious  thing;  it  is 
a  natural  thing.  The  amateur  pleases  because 
his  work  is  direct  and  simple,  but  this  sim- 
plicity comes  because  his  knowledge  of  the 


"  FUTURES  "  173 

craft  is  direct  and  simple.  It  does  not  come 
because  his  art  is  sound,  but  because  he  has 
no  art  at  all!  As  an  amateur  the  young  actor 
knows  a  few  simple  rudiments  of  the  actor's 
art;  and  those  few  things  he  does  sponta- 
neously with  no  thought  or  knowledge  of  the 
many  other  ways  the  same  things  might  be 
done.  It  is  when  an  actor  begins  to  do  con- 
sciously what  he  has  been  doing  intuitively 
that  he  runs  the  danger  of  losing  the  very 
virtues  which  accounted  for  his  early  suc- 
cesses. 

I  remember  seeing  the  Moffat  Company  in 
London.  They  had  been  playing  in  the 
provinces  of  Scotland  with  no  pretense  of 
being  anything  but  what  they  were — a  com- 
pany of  sincere  amateurs.  They  brought 
Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings  to  London,  and 
carried  that  piece  to  a  flattering  success.  They 
were  the  veriest  amateurs,  every  one  of  them; 
but  their  total  lack  of  mannerisms  of  all  kinds, 
their  absorption  in  their  play  and  the  atmos- 
phere this  created,  their  perfect  naturalness 
and  unstudied  simplicity  captivated  London. 


174  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

They  were  hailed  as  great  actors.  But  after 
"  Bunty"  their  popularity  dwindled.  Only 
one  member  of  that  company  has  ever  been 
heard  of  since.  That  is,  when  they  stopped 
playing  this  little  Scotch  piece,  which  was 
peculiarly  their  own,  a  picture  of  themselves 
and  their  everyday  life,  they  failed.  When 
they  tried  to  do,  by  means  of  their  technique, 
what  they  had  been  accustomed  to  do  quite 
spontaneously,  they  brought  themselves  into 
competition  with  the  regular  profession;  and 
their  lack  of  solid  training  and  experience  was 
quickly  and  disastrously  shown.  They  be- 
came self-conscious;  they  were  unable  to  re- 
tain, as  their  knowledge  increased,  the  de- 
lightful, unstudied  simplicity  which  had  first 
opened  the  doors  for  them. 

What  was  true  of  this  company  has  been 
true  of  many  and  many  an  actor,  in  a  greater 
or  less  degree.  I  believe  it  must  be  true — 
in  a  greater  or  less  degree — of  all  actors. 
And  for  the  beginning  actor  I  believe  there 
is  only  one  maxim  which  can  guide  him  safely 
through  this  critical  time,  and  enable  him  to 


"  FUTURES  "  175 

fulfil   the    bright   x^romise   he    may    show    at  ^ 
the  start.     That  maxim  is  the  theme  of  this  1 
little  book:  Simphcity  must  be  our  aim.    The  ^ 
more  we  know  the  greater  grows  the  danger 
of  losing  that  precious  simplicity,  that  illu- 
sion of  life,  which  is  the  end  and  aim  of  all 
our  painfully-won  knowledge.    No  actor  can 
be  a  master  of  his  craft  until  he  has  spent 
years   in   acquiring   knowledge;    and   having 
acquired  it,  has  learned  as  well  how  to  con- 
ceal it  from  the  audience  and  to  appear  as 
natural  as  the  unprofessional  player.     This 
acquired  naturalness  is,  in  reality,  infinitely 
more  effective  theatrically  than  that  of  the 
amateur — as  is  shown  when  the  true  profes- 
sional and  the  amateur  are  placed  side  by  side 
— but  no  man  can  realize  his  fullest  powers  as^^ 
an  actor  who  does  not   strive   to  refine   his  1 
knowledge  into  an  intelligent  simplicity. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE     EFFECT    OF    REALISTIC     SCENERY 
AND  LIGHTING  ON  THE  ACTOR 

Work  of  the  Actor  Inextricably  Interwoven  with  That 
of  the  Producer,  Scenic  Artist,  etc. — Scenery  Should 
Suggest  not  Copy  Life,  Should  Stimulate  not  Over- 
feed or  Starve  the  Imagination — The  Ironworks  in 
Galsworthy's  Strife,  "  Real  "  and  Suggested — Gran- 
ville Barker's  Setting  for  Androcles  and  the  Lion: 
Proudly  Crude  and  Frankly  Primitive — The  Pri- 
mary Purpose  of  All  Scenery — When  the  Imagina- 
tive Artist,  the  Interior  Decorator,  and  the  Landscape 
Gardener  Clash — The  Mechanical  Ship  That  Would 
Not  Wreck,  and  the  Simpler  Substitute — How  Actors 
Are  Often  Swamped  by  Scenery — The  Need  of  Co- 
ordination— The  Terrors  of  Strange  Furniture — Many 
Plays  Ruined  by  Lack  of  Method — Lighting  Which 
Blurs  or  Silhouettes  the  Faces  of  the  Actors — Nat- 
ural Lighting-^Distracting  Lights — Moonlight — Seek- 
ing the  Impression  of  Reality,  Not  Reality  Itself. 

WHILE    an   actor   is   naturally    con- 
cerned   primarily   with    the    art    of 
conceiving  the  characters  he   plays 
and  of  projecting  them  properly,  so  much  de- 
pends upon  the  mechanical  accessories  of  the 

176 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    177 

stage  production  that  it  may  be  well  to  turn 
our  attention  to  that  phase  of  the  craft  for 
a  time.  The  work  of  the  actor  is  inextricably 
interwoven  with  that  of  the  producer,  and  the 
scenic  artist,  and  the  others.  Together  they 
are  striving  for  a  common  end:  the  creation 
of  theatrical  effects,  if  by  theatrical  effects 
we  mean  those  artistic  illusions  which  are 
the  legitimate  and  unique  province  of  the 
theater. 

These  effects,  as  we  have  seen  with  regard 
to  the  actor,  come  best  when  the  attempt  is 
made  not  to  copy  life,  but  to  suggest  it.  >  This 
great  principle  of  stagecraft  would  surely 
seem  to  imply  that  absolute  realism  in  staging 
is  not,  in  itself,  desirable.  It  is  quite  evi- 
dent that  the  scenery  and  properties  may  be 
too  realistic  and  thus  defeat  their  purpose; 
instead  of  stimulating  the  imagination,  they 
may  banish  it  by  giving  it  nothing  to  do. 
There  is  a  tendency  to  regard  absolute  real- 
lism  as  an  end  in  itself,  whereas  it  is  properly 
a  means  to  an  end. 

If  the  scene  is  a  grocery  store,   and  the 


178  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

storekeeper,  to  make  a  point  in  the  pla}^ 
must  ring  up  a  purchase  on  the  cash  register, 
he  must  have  a  cash  register  to  ring  it  up  on. 
But  the  actual  reahsm  need  not  go  much  fur- 
ther. It  is  not  necessary  to  fill  the  stage 
with  real  barrels  and  boxes  and  shelves  of 
canned  goods  and  glass  counters  of  candy.  It 
is  only  necessary  to  give  the  audience  the 
impression  that  all  the  things  are  on  the  stage. 
The  problem  is  to  give  them  just  enough  to 
suggest  a  grocery  store,  yet  not  give  them 
too  much.  There  are  simple  ways  of  giving 
the  impression  that  there  are  many  barrels 
and  boxes  and  shelves  on  the  stage  without 
their  actually  being  there.  There  are  no 
/bounds  to  illusion,  while  realism  is  limited 
Iw  the  dimensions  of  the  stage. 

It  is  possible  to  make  the  audience  imagine 
that  they  are  looking  at  a  battle  in  which 
thousands  of  people  are  taking  part.  It  is 
possible  to  suggest  a  labor  riot  in  which 
hundreds  of  laborers  swarm  around  their  em- 
ployer's office.  But  these  things  could  never 
be  put  on  the  stage,  no  matter  how  many 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    179 

thousands  of  dollars  one  were  ready  to  spend. 
The  second  scene  of  the  second  act  of  Gals- 
worthy's Strife  is  in  the  ironworks.  I  saw 
the  play  given  once  with  splendid  scenery  in 
which  wherever  possible  the  real  article  had 
been  provided.  We  had  before  us  a  railway 
track,  a  wagon,  a  practical  chimney,  ware- 
houses, windows  that  opened  and  closed,  and 
a  great  number  of  supernumeraries.  It  must 
have  cost  thousands  to  stage  this  one  scene. 
The  woodwork  alone  must  have  represented 
the  salary  of  a  first-class  actor.  But  to  me 
all  this  "  realism  "  was  a  dead  waste  of  time, 
energy,  and  money;  for  I  had  seen  the  play 
given  before  where  this  scene  had  been  sug- 
gested by  a  very  old  and  worn  back  cloth. 
The  painting  was  faded,  but  it  had  been  v/ell 
done  and  still  served  to  conjure  up  in  the 
imagination  vast  warehouses  and  towering 
chimneys;  there  was  a  sense  of  great  spaces 
and  immense  power,  and  grim  monotony,  and 
drifting  smoke,  which  was  quite  lacking  in 
the  "  real "  chimneys  and  windows  of  the 
more  expensive  set.    I  do  not  know  just  how 


180  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

many  supernumeraries  were  used  in  the  mob 
scene,  but  very  few  I  am  sure.  The  Hghts 
were  lowered  and  carefully  manipulated, 
which  gave  the  effect  that  masses  of  men 
were  surging  over  the  stage.  In  the  former 
case  I  had  been  impressed  by  the  lavishness 
of  the  production;  I  had  admired  the  way 
the  crowds  were  moved  about,  and  had  real- 
ized that  the  tracks  and  chimneys  were  very 
realistic  stage  tracks  and  chimneys;  but  in 
the  latter  case  my  imagination  was  warmed 
and  stirred,  not  dwarfed,  and  the  consequent 
illusion  was  infinitely  better,  while  the  ex- 
pense of  production  was  slight,  quite  negligi- 
ble compared  with  the  other. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  do  not  have  much 
admiration  for  stage  settings  which  merely 
challenge  and  baffle  our  imagination.  I  am 
not  among  those  who  champion  post-impres- 
sionism in  stage  settings.  In  Bernard  Shaw's 
Androcles  and  the  Lion  there  is  a  scene  in  a 
jungle,  and  it  is  of  course  a  question  how  this 
jungle  should  best  be  indicated.  In  Granville 
Barker's  production  of  the  play   (a  produc- 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    181 

tion  which  was  admirable  in  many  respects) 
this  scene  consisted  of  a  painted  drop  cloth 
at  the  bottom  of  which  was  a  low-arched  « 
hole  festooned  with  strips  of  green  cloth — 
that  was  all.  It  did  not  suggest  a  jungle 
to  my  imagination.  It  looked  to  me  for  all 
the  world  like  a  painted  drop  with  a  hole  in 
it  festooned  with  strips  of  green  cloth.  I 
merely  punished  and  confused  my  imagina- 
tion when  I  tried  to  make  a  jungle  of  it.  I 
think  we  recoil  from  the  proudly  crude  and 
frank  primitive  in  art.  Simplicity  is  alL:?ery__ 
w^U^Jbirt^  crudityjs_^impl^^  For  my 

part,  I  do  not  believe  in  the  rigorous  asceti-    _ 
cism   that   starves   the   imagination   as   much 
that  is  ultra-modern  in  staging  does;  that  is 
quite  as  bad  as  overfeeding  it. 

Where  realism  shall  end  and  give  way  to 
suggestion  is,  I  believe,  the  problem  of  ef- 
fective staging;  and  only  by  keeping  un- 
clouded the  primary  purpose  of  our  stage 
setting  can  we  meet  it  properly.  That  pur- 
pose must  always  be  to  supplement  as  defi- 
nitely, yet  as  unobtrusively,  as  possible  the 


182  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

work  of  the  actor  and  the  dramatist.  The 
test  of  any  stage  set  is  the  impression  it 
makes  on  the  imagination  of  the  audience, 
not  in  the  comments  they  may  make  on  the 
magnificence  or  ingenuity  of  its  construc- 
tion. If  it  is  absorbed  by  the  play,  good;  if 
it  stands  out  on  its  own,  had.  This  means 
that  we  are  working  in  the  reahn  of  sugges- 
tion and  illusion  rather  than  in  the  actual, 
that  our  methods  are  those  of  the  imagina- 
tive painter  rather  than  those  of  the  me- 
chanically skilled  decorator;  and  that  we 
must  be  careful  not  to  confuse  the  methods 
of  the  two.  It  is  possible  to  be  too  fantastic 
(as  in  the  case  of  Granville  Barker's  jungle) 
and  thus  fail  to  convince;  it  is  also  possible 
to  be  too  realistic  in  minor  points  and  thus 
succeed  merely  in  caUing  attention  to  the 
artificiality  of  the  whole. 

As  an  example  of  the  latter  I  remember 
seeing  a  garden  scene  once  which  at  first 
glance  seemed  a  delightful  piece  of  work. 
It  was  a  beautiful  garden,  but  there  was 
something   about   it  that   was   false.     As   I 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    183 

looked  at  it  there  was  no  sense  on  my  part 
that  I  was  looking  at  a  garden.  I  was 
simply  admiring  a  most  ornate  bit  of  stage 
decoration,  an  attractive  bit  of  scene-painting. 
This  was  certainly  not  the  impression  the 
scenic  artist  had  tried  to  produce;  he  had 
been  trying  to  create  the  illusion  that  we  saw 
a  real  garden  before  us,  and  he  had  failed. 
I  wondered  why.  Then  I  noticed  that  near 
the  footlights  on  each  side  of  the  stage  was 
a  wing  painted  quite  beautifully  to  represent 
trees  and  flowers.  Just  behind  the  wings,  on 
each  side  of  the  stage,  was  an  arch  over 
which  the  stage  manager  had  trailed  either 
real  flowers  or  very  excellent  imitations.  I 
am  sure  those  "  real "  flowers  were  the  secret 
of  the  failure.  They  gave  the  painted  wing 
dead  away.  The  wings  themselves  were  really 
more  beautiful  than  the  reahstic  flowers,  for 
the  former  were  fanciful  and  the  latter  actual. 
To  have  the  actual  in  juxtaposition  with  the\ 
fanciful  served  to  point  out  that  the  whole] 
was  an  imitation;  in  other  words,  the  imagi- 
native artist  and  the  landscape  gardener  had 


184  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

clashed  and  both  had  come  to  grief.  Very- 
likely  the  real  flowers  might  have  been  ar- 
ranged so  that  they  could  have  aided  the 
illusion  of  the  painted  ones.  There  was  a 
point  in  this  scene  where  realism  could  have 
been  shaded  into  suggestion,  I  have  no  doubt ; 
but  this  fusion  could  not  have  been  made  by  a 
man  who  had  set  out  to  put  a  real  garden 
on  the  stage,  only  by  the  one  who  sought  to 
give  the  audience  an  impression  of  a  real 
garden;  and  how  much  simpler  and  more  ar- 
tistic, and  less  expensive,  his  work  would 
be. 

I  once  knew  a  scene  painter  by  the  name  of 
Richard  Douglas.  I  often  used  to  drop 
around  to  his  paint-room  and  talk  shop  with 
him.  He  had  painted  scenes  all  his  life  and 
was  full  of  experiences  with  managers  good, 
bad,  and  indifferent.  He  told  me  a  little 
tale  one  day  which  comes  to  mind  as  I  write, 
and  which  seems  to  indicate  so  clearly  how 
simplicity  and  suggestion  may  triumph  over 
elaborate  realism.  He  had  been  called  to  a 
theater  a  few  days  before  the  opening  of  a 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY   185 

play  to — as  it  were — save  the  sinking  ship, 
for  the  play  contained  a  difficult  scene  repre- 
senting a  ship  tossed  by  a  storm  at  sea.  The 
sea  had  been  managed  easily  enough.  They 
had  a  "  sea-cloth  "  and  the  effect  of  the  storm 
was  procured  by  concealing  stage-hands  on 
each  side  of  the  stage  and  having  them  send 
wave  after  wave  across  the  ocean  by  the  sim- 
ple expedient  of  shaking  the  cloth.  The  mini- 
ature vessel  was  a  marvel  of  engineer's  skill. 
By  intricate  contrivances,  wheels,  planes,  a 
huge  steel  pivot,  and  Heaven  knows  what  else, 
it  was  made  to  heave  up  and  down,  roll,  and 
turn,  and  give  a  very  realistic  idea  of  a  ship 
in  distress.  Everything  had  looked  perfect, 
but  there  was  a  flaw — the  complicated  ma- 
chinery failed  to  work.  So  the  management 
in  despair  had  called  in  Douglas;  they  had 
sent  for  him  on  Tuesday  and  the  perform- 
ance was  to  be  given  on  the  following  Friday. 
Douglas  went  and  took  one  look  at  the 
ship,  and  came  back  to  his  little  paint-shop. 
The  management  had  asked  him  frantically 
if  he  thought  he  could  fix  things  for  them  by 


186  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

Friday,  he  had  rephed  that  he  could  do  it  in 
forty-eight  hours.  And  he  did.  He  made 
a  rephea  of  the  boat  with  strips  of  bamboo, 
covered  it  with  canvas  and  painted  it  to  rep- 
resent the  ship;  ten  feet  away  it  looked  quite 
as  lifelike  as  the  ingeniously  contrived  little 
failure.  At  the  bottom  of  his  canvas-and- 
bamboo  ship  Douglas  left  a  hole  large  enough 
for  a  man  to  get  his  shoulders  through,  and 
then  he  fastened  the  boat  to  the  sea-cloth. 
A  stage-hand  got  under  the  sea-cloth  and  put 
his  shoulders  through  the  hole  in  the  ship. 
They  had  cut  a  trap-door  in  the  stage  for 
him,  which  enabled  him  to  stand  at  the  re- 
quisite depth.  The  result  was  perfect.  The 
mechanically  prescribed  twists  and  turns  of 
the  original  were  as  nothing  compared  with 
the  results  accomplished  by  that  man's  shoul- 
ders and  his  unfettered  imagination.  He 
not  only  made  it  toss  and  roll  and  twist  at 
will,  but  he  could  even  make  it  shudder  as  it 
was  struck  by  an  unusually  towering  wave! 
The  original  machinery  which  had  cost  two 
thousand  dollars  was  scrapped.     The  cost  of 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    187 

Douglas's  device  was  well  under  one  hundred 
dollars ! 

I  remember  another  similar  incident  he  used 
to  tell.  In  a  certain  pantomime,  in  the  trans- 
formation scene  were  eighteen  large  and 
beautiful  sea-shells  which,  at  a  given  cue, 
turned  round  and  displayed  eighteen  beauti- 
ful mermaids.  The  shells  were  to  have  been 
turned  by  machinery,  but  it  broke  down  and 
the  old-timer  was  hastily  summoned.  His 
method  of  solving  this  difficulty  was  even 
simpler.  He  merely  had  the  shells  fastened 
to  the  backs  of  the  girls  playing  the  mermaids 
and,  at  a  given  cue,  they  turned  themselves 
round!  Both  of  these  effects,  done  in  the 
simpler,  less  obtrusive  way,  were  much  more 
impressive  than  anything  the  elaborate  and 
expensive  mechanical  devices  could  have  pro- 
duced even  if  they  had  worked. 

Some  years  ago  one  of  the  daily  papers 
in  London  sent  a  letter  to  all  the  producers 
in  the  city  asking  them  if  genuine  antique 
furniture  would  not  add  richness  to  the  stage 
scenes,   and  if  it  was  not  therefore  greatly 


188  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

to  be  desired.  Most  producers  were  in  favor 
of  it,  but  some  were  not,  myself  included.  I 
replied  that  so  long  as  the  furniture  looked 
real  I  preferred  the  imitation  to  the  real, 
for  to  have  furniture  that  cost  thousands 
of  dollars  would  require  the  greatest  care 
in  the  handling  and  would  thus  take 
much  longer  to  set  and  take  away.  Also  the 
imitation  could  be  easily  replaced  if  breakages 
should  occur,  as  they  probably  would.  One 
producer  stated  that  he  would  welcome  any 
such  gift  and  that  he  would  be  glad  to  state 
its  value  and  the  name  of  the  donor  on  the 
program.  Such  an  attitude  seems  to  me  the 
result  of  a  misconception  of  what  we  try  to 
do  in  the  theater.  Instead  of  calling  the  at- 
tention of  the  audience  to  the  "  real "  things 
on  the  stage,  are  we  not  rather  hoping  to 
make  them  forget  the  real  and  actual;  are 
we  not  using  our  properties  to  beguile  their 
fancy  and  to  make  them  forget  that  they 
are  in  a  theater  at  all?  How  can  this  be  done 
if  they  are  reminded  that  the  room  on  the 
stage  has  been  furnished  by  So-and-so  or  if, 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    189 

when  the  curtain  goes  up,  they  think  of  the 
value  and  beauty  of  the  tables  and  chairs 
instead  of  the  story  that  is  being  enacted 
before  them?  On  the  stage  the  actor  and 
the  play  should  always  be  supreme.  The  only 
notice  directly  paid  to  the  work  of  the  scenic 
artist  and  property  man  per  se  should  come 
from  the  trained  few  who  realize  that  the 
settings  are  skilfully  contributing  to  the  il- 
lusion created  by  the  actors. 

How  often  this  fact  is  lost  sight  of!  How 
often  we  allow  ourselves  to  become  blinded  to 
the  fact  that  the  scenic  artist  and  the  prop- 
erty man,  and  the  costume  designer  and  the 
electrician  and  the  others  are  called  in  to 
help  the  illusion  of  the  play  and  for  no  other 
reason.  How  often  these  people  are  allowed 
to  display  their  own  prowess  at  the  expense 
of  the  actors  whom  they  are  supposed  to  be 
helping.  I  saw  this  painfully  demonstrated 
in  a  Shakespearian  play  on  Broadway  not 
many  months  ago.  The  company  was  headed 
by  a  lady  whose  name  is  associated  with  the 
best  things  in  the  theater  and  in  her  support 


190  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

were  several  others  who  hold  high  positions 
in  the  profession.  I  went  to  the  theater  in 
high  hopes  of  seeing  a  memorable  perform- 
ance. But  I  was  keenly  disappointed.  The 
really  splendid  acting  of  the  company  was 
swamped  by  the  astounding  scenery.  In  one 
of  the  scenes  most  of  the  acting  was  done 
on  a  peculiar  bridge  which  somehow  gave  the 
impression  of  being  miles  distant  up  the 
stage.  The  dramatic  effect  of  the  hues 
spoken  from  this  strange  perch  can  be  im- 
agined. One  of  the  other  scenes  was  a  slop- 
ing platform,  and  we  had  the  uncomfortable 
feeling  that  the  actors  were  having  difficulty 
in  keeping  their  feet.  Still  another  scene  was 
ruined  because  the  light  at  the  back  of  the 
stage  was  so  brilliant  that  the  actors'  faces 
were  silhouetted  against  it  in  shadow.  All 
facial  play  was  out  of  the  question.  It  is 
easy  to  imagine  what  became  of  Shakespeare's 
lines. 

I  do  not  think  the  scenic  artist  was  so 
much  to  blame,  in  this  case,  as  the  producer. 
The  latter  should  have  reahzed  that  the  slop- 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY   191 

ing  platform  would  make  the  actors'  work 
exceedingly  difficult;  and  he  certainly  should 
have  known  that  to  allow  his  artist  to  dis- 
play his  sense  of  blazing  colors  would  be 
distracting  to  the  audience  and  fatal  to  the 
play.  The  impression  made  by  the  perform- 
ance was  indicated  in  the  remarks  I  heard 
as  I  left  the  theater :  "  Wasn't  the  scenery 
beautiful? "  "I  loved  that  wood  scene — 
and  that  inn  too,  with  the  touch  of  purple 
in  the  walls."  The  inn  had  had  purple  walls, 
and  the  sense  of  those  purple  walls  had  been 
the  strongest  impression  left  on  my  mind.  I 
did  not  hear  a  single  comment  on  the  acting 
of  the  company,  and  much  of  it  had  been  su- 
perb. But  the  actors  had  been  working 
against  an  enormous  handicap  and  I  felt 
sorry  for  them — I  was  also  deeply  dissatis- 
fied myself,  for  I  had  gone  to  see  one  of 
Shakespeare's  plays,  not  a  blazing  exhibition 
of  modern  scenic  art.  I  thought  as  I  left 
the  theater  of  an  old  saying  of  Sydney 
Smith's.  He  had  had  a  very  mean  dinner  in 
a  room  whose  decorations  were  gorgeous  and 


192  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

faultless.  "  I  would  have  preferred,"  he  re- 
marked, "  a  little  less  gilding  and  a  little 
more   carving." 

It  may  be  that  such  brilliant  fiascos  as  this 
occur — and  there  are  always  two  or  three 
every  season — because  the  work  of  the  dif- 
ferent specialists  is  not  co-ordinated  and  in- 
telligently directed.  I  thoroughly  believe  that 
all  should  co-operate,  all  should  be  in  the 
confidence  of  the  producer;  they  should  not 
be  allowed  to  do  their  work  independently. 
Many  managers  give  orders  for  scenery  and 
costume  and  properties  to  firms  or  individuals 
who  execute  them  without  having  the  faintest 
idea  of  what  the  play  is  about!  Asked  why 
he  does  this,  the  manager  would  probably 
reply  that  the  fewer  the  people  who  know 
the  nature  of  the  play  beforehand  the  less 
danger  there  is  of  having  somebody  steal  a 
march  on  him  by  producing  a  similar  play 
ahead  of  him.  Whether  the  manager  is  in 
any  very  great  danger  of  having  the  wind 
taken  out  of  his  sails  in  this  way  I  do  not 
know.      But    certainly    endless    confusion    is 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    193 

often  caused  by  keeping  the  scenic  artist  and 
the  others  ignorant  of  how  their  work  is  sup- 
posed to  apply  to  the  whole.  I  have  often 
heard  a  costume  designer  complain  at  the 
dress  rehearsal  that  the  color  of  the  scenery 
was  damaging  to  the  color  scheme  of  his  cos- 
tumes. Very  often  this  is  true,  and  merely 
because  the  two  men  have  had  no  chance 
to  get  together  and  compare  notes  and  co- 
ordinate their  work.  If  a  round  table  discus- 
sion had  been  arranged  everybody  would  have 
been  working  in  harmony  with  everyone  else 
from  the  start. 

Indeed,  I  think  that  the  first  thing  a 
producer  should  do  when  he  sets  to  work  on 
the  mechanical  accessories  of  the  production 
is  to  call  a  meeting  of  the  scenic  artist,  the 
costume  designer,  the  electrician,  the  property 
man,  the  carpenter,  the  musician,  and  the 
stage  managers  and  have  the  play  read  to 
them.  Then  he  should  welcome  the  discus- 
sion of  its  technical  aspects  which  will  follow 
naturally  enough  if  he  does  nothing  to  stop 
it.    He  will  encourage  his  assistants  to  discuss 


194  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

the  play  from  their  different  points  of  view, 
for  it  is  astonishing  how  many  really  good 
ideas  may  come  out  of  such  a  discussion.  I 
once  heard  a  stage  carpenter  at  a  meeting 
of  this  kind  make  a  suggestion  of  great 
value.  The  play's  first  act  required  a  large 
exterior  set  and  the  second  act  required  an- 
other. In  the  opinion  of  the  scenic  artist 
two  sets  would  have  to  be  built,  and  it  would 
have  taken  from  ten  to  fifteen  minutes  to 
change  them.  But  the  carpenter  explained 
that  by  painting  the  platforms  and  back  drop 
on  their  reverse  sides  the  first  set  could  be 
turned  about  and  made  to  serve  for  the 
second.  This  advice  was  carried  out  and 
the  wait  between  the  first  and  second  acts 
was  actually  reduced  from  ten  or  fifteen  min- 
utes to  two.  No  one  but  the  stage  carpenter 
would  have  understood  that  this  could  be 
done.  If  he  had  not  been  at  the  meeting  he 
would  have  got  his  models  from  the  scenic 
artist  and  built  the  two  sets  according  to 
specifications.  The  cost  to  the  management 
would  have  been  double,   and   a  long  wait 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    195 

would  have  been  necessary.  Many  a  time 
I  have  heard  a  stage  carpenter  grumblingly 
explain  how  he  could  have  built  his  sets  with 
half  the  labor  and  a  fraction  of  the  expense 
if  he  had  been  informed  in  time  just  what 
the  entire  requirements  of  the  play  were. 

The  lack  of  co-operation  among  producer, 
actors,  and  scenic  artist  and  the  others  fre- 
quently is  the  cause  of  great  hardship  to  the 
actor;  and  I  beheve  it  may  be  the  partial 
cause  of  the  failure  of  many  plays.  The  actor 
studies  his  lines  and  perfects  his  part  with 
only  a  vague  notion  of  what  the  stage  set  is 
to  be  Uke;  the  scenic  artist  designs  the  seen* 
ery  with  an  even  more  vague  notion  of  what 
the  actors  are  to  do;  the  electrician  arranges 
his  light  with  little  regard  for  the  principal 
purpose  of  lights:  the  emphasizing  and  ac- 
centuating of  the  actor's  work.  Is  it  sur- 
prising that  there  are  many  clashes  at  dress 
rehearsals,  many  disheartening  obstacles  for 
the  actor  to  meet — the  more  disheartening 
because  they  are  unnecessary?  For  surely 
it  would  be  a  simple  thing  for  the  producer 


4 


196  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

to  give  the  actors,  before  rehearsals  begin,  the 
exact  dimensions  of  the  stage  on  which  they 
are  to  play;  and  above  all  he  should  reahze 
the  importance  of  rehearsing  with  furniture  of 
the  same  size  as  that  to  be  used  in  produc- 
tion. He  may  not  be  able  to  get  the  actual 
furniture  at  the  start — though  this  can  often 
be  done — but  it  would  always  be  possible,  and 
is  always  supremely  desirable,  that  the  sub- 
stitutes used  be  the  same  dimensions  as  the 
real  furniture  is  to  be.  It  is  something  of  a 
shock  for  an  actor,  who  has  been  rehearsing 
with  a  chair  whose  seat  is  twenty  inches  from 
the  ground,  to  come  on  at  the  dress  rehearsal 
and  drop  into  a  chair  only  sixteen  inches  high. 
It  is  enough  to  throw  him  off  for  the  entire 
evening. 

The  actor  may  have  been  rehearsing  for  six 
weeks  with  a  stock  table  of  considerable  size, 
and  he  has  found  that  he  gets  a  rather  good 
effect  by  planting  his  elbows  on  the  table  and 
leaning  across  toward  the  man  facing  him. 
He  comes  on  the  stage  at  the  dress  rehearsal 
and  finds  a  beautiful  antique  where  he  has 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    197 

grown  accustomed  to  a  broad  and  solid  deal 
table.  He  leans  forward  as  per  custom  to 
plant  his  elbows  on  it — and  finds  the  table  is 
too  small  to  permit  the  gesture.  This,  at  a 
dress  rehearsal  when  he  is  naturally  keyed  up 
nervously,  is  enough  to  strike  terror  into  his 
heart  and  jar  all  his  carefully  planned  busi- 
ness out  of  his  head.  For  an  actor  comes  to 
the  dress  rehearsal  in  the  highest  pitch  of 
nervous  excitement.  He  wishes  to  put  the 
final  touches  on  his  performance,  and  with  a 
fair  chance  would  do  so  to  the  delight  of  the 
producer.  But  after  a  few  rebuffs  like  the 
foregoing  he  is  lucky  if  he  remembers  his 
lines.  I  once  heard  a  producer  shout  at  an 
actor,  "  Why,  you  don't  even  know  your 
words,  sir!"  "Well,  give  me  a  decent  chair 
to  sit  on,  sir,  and  they'll  all  come  back!" 
the  harassed  actor  replied  angrily.  It  is 
most  disheartening  when  the  actor  has  been 
straining  every  energy  for  from  three  to  six 
weeks  putting  in  the  most  delicate  workman- 
ship, if  he  comes  to  the  dress  rehearsal  keyed 
up  for  his  final  and  best  effort,  and  then  finds 


198  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

himself  thrown  completely  off  his  stride  be- 
cause the  accessories  have  not  been  properly- 
looked  after. 

Such  mishaps  are  due  to  the  lack  of 
;  method.  They  could  be  avoided  by  taking 
a  little  trouble  at  the  start,  and  securing  the 
real  furniture  and  the  real  scenery  which  is 
to  be  used,  or  having  substitutes  of  the  same 
dimensions.  When  one  reflects  that  the  man 
who  backs  a  play  often  has  many  thousands 
at  stake,  and  when  we  think  of  the  narrow 
margin  that  often  separates  success  from 
failure,  of  the  trifles  that  have  again  and 
again  determined  a  play's  success  or  failure, 
is  it  not  surprising  that  these  slipshod  methods 
are  followed?  It  is  only  on  the  stage  that 
such  laxity  is  tolerated;  other  businesses  are 
not  conducted  in  any  such  manner.  Not  long 
ago  I  heard  a  producer  explain  that  the  scen- 
ery was  not  ready,  but  though  it  was  sadly 
needed,  the  scenic  artist  was  too  valuable 
a  man  to  quarrel  with!  The  proper  way  to 
handle  these  details  surely  would  be  to  have 
contracts  with  the  scenic  artists,  and  costum- 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    199 

ers,  and  the  rest,  which  should  stipulate  that 
if  the  goods  were  not  delivered  by  a  certain 
date  there  should  be  a  forfeit  for  every  day 
lost.  Then  the  dress  rehearsal  would  put  a 
polish  on  the  work  done  before  and  not  tend 
to  tear  it  down. 

I  am  quite  aware  that  it  is  the  custom  to 
try  out  new  plays  in  small  towns  near  New 
York  where  they  are  poHshed  up  for  their 
metropolitan  opening;  but  many  of  those 
plays  are  never  brought  into  New  York,  be- 
ing unable  to  survive  the  ordeal  of  such  a 
try-out.  After  a  disastrous  first  night  in  one 
of  these  "  dog- towns,"  author,  producer,  and 
actors  work  frantically  at  cruelly  high  pres- 
sure trying  to  whip  the  play  into  shape  in  a 
week  or  so.  How  can  painstaking  and  effi- 
cient work  be  done  under  those  hectic  condi- 
tions? There  can  be  little  doubt  that  many 
plays  are  killed  because  they  come  up  to  the 
dress  rehearsal  in  a  ragged,  half -ready  con- 
dition; are  harmed  still  more  by  the  dress 
rehearsal  itself;  and  go  to  pieces  on  their  first 
night.    If  care  could  be  taken  to  have  a  fin- 


200  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

ished  dress  rehearsal,  by  allowing  the  actors 
to  become  familiar  from  the  start  with  the 
scenery  and  properties,  a  great  many  plays 
might  be  saved.  Certainly  the  opening  per- 
formance in  New  York  could  not  fail  to  be 
benefited  if  the  out-of-town  performance  were 
made  as  thorough  and  finished  as  possible; 
and  it  would  seem  so  simple  to  do  this — by 
giving  the  actor  a  fair  chance  to  do  his  best. 
I  suppose  one  of  the  most  common  sources 
of  distress  for  the  actor  is  injudicious  light- 
ing. As  we  have  seen,  the  words  spoken  on 
the  stage  derive  much  of  their  force  from  the 
emphasis  they  receive  from  the  facial  expres- 
sion of  the  actor.  The  lighting  of  any  stage 
set  should  be  designed  principally  to  throw 
the  actor's  face  into  high  relief,  therefore  to 
enable  him  to  register  on  the  audience  the 
subtle  movements  of  his  eyes  and  the  signifi- 
cant and  fleeting  expressions  that  flit  over  his 
face.  If  the  actor's  face  is  not  clearly  seen 
throughout  it  is  inevitable  that  his  effective- 
\ness  be  greatly  diminished.  But,  as  more  and 
more  attention  is  paid  to  the  creation  of  strik- 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY   201 

ing  stage  pictures  and  clever  lighting  effects, 
we  seem  to  forget  that  these  should  only  serve 
as  a  background  for  the  actor,  that  the  face  of 
the  actor  should  be  the  high-light  of  any  stage 
picture. 

In  scenic  design  there  is  one  kind  of  set 
that  is  almost  always  the  same  wherever  we 
see  it,  that  is  the  outdoor  set.  It  is  very 
rarely  that  we  find  one  that  does  not  give 
us  the  sky  at  the  rear  directly  facing  the  audi- 
ence. Naturally  there  must  be  more  light 
on  the  sky  than  on  any  other  portion  of  the 
scene,  and  with  the  sky  at  the  rear  the  faces 
of  the  actors  who  must  play  in  front  of  it 
cannot  be  in  rehef ;  they  cannot  be  the  high- 
lights of  the  picture.  If  you  should  ask  a 
producer  if  a  strong  light  at  the  back  of  an 
actor  is  not,  in  general,  a  good  thing  he 
would  probably  lay  the  question  to  your 
stupidity.  He  might,  to  make  his  point  clear, 
hold  a  light  behind  and  above  his  own  head 
to  show  you  the  effect.  But  it  never  seems 
to  occur  to  him  that  the  bright  sky  at  the 
rear  is  doing  precisely  the  same  thing  for  his 


202  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

stage.  Yet  it  is  so  easy  to  break  the  glare  of 
the  sky  with  trees  or  houses  so  that  the  faces 
of  the  actors  are  in  light  and  not  in  shadow. 
I  recall  a  play  which  turned  on  a  scene  in 
which  a  man  stood  at  the  rear  and  listened 
in  silence  to  an  important  conversation.  The 
light  was  mostly  behind  him  and  the  color 
of  his  face  merged  into  that  of  the  back 
cloth.  How  were  we  to  know  that  the  words 
he  overheard  had  such  tremendous  signifi- 
cance for  him?  It  was  impossible  for  us  to 
see  the  expression  on  his  face  at  all;  we 
could  not  even  be  sure  that  he  was  listen- 
ing to  what  the  others  were  saying.  If  the 
welfare  of  the  play  had  been  the  first  con- 
sideration in  the  minds  of  the  scenic  designer 
and  electrician  this  error  would  never  have 
been  made.  Clearly  they  had  been  thinking 
not  of  the  events  which  were  to  take  place 
during  the  scene,  but  had  bent  their  energies 
to  the  making  of  a  striking  stage  picture. 
And  with  this  mistaken  motive  it  is  easy  for 
the  scenic  artist  to  be  captivated  by  an  idea 
which  entails  a  brilliant  flood  of  light  at  the 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY   203 

rear,  and  it  is  easy  for  the  producer  to  be 
beguiled  by  it.  In  the  theater,  however,  the 
eye  is  invariably  attracted  to  the  brightest 
light;  and  it  is  sure  to  be  damaging  to  the 
play  if  the  attention  of  the  audience  is  lured 
away  to  the  back  drop  or  the  ceiling  when 
what  they  should  be  noticing  always  is  the 
actor  on  the  stage.  In  my  youth  I  used  to 
hear  old  actors  say  that  they  would  sooner 
play  their  best  scenes  in  an  oak  chamber  than 
in  any  other  set.  They  could  never  tell  me 
why ;  but  I  have  no  doubt  the  reason  was  that 
the  closed-in  scene  was  a  better  conveyor  of 
sound,  and  especially  because  the  somber  color 
of  the  walls  threw  their  facial  expression  into 
clearer  relief. 

But  even  in  interior  sets  the  lighting  is 
often  distracting.  It  may  be  said  that  usually 
ceihngs  are  too  light.  In  real  life  the  ceiling 
receives  less  reflected  light  than  any  other 
portion  of  the  room.  In  almost  any  room  this 
is  true.  The  ceihng  probably  is  painted  a 
lighter  color  than  the  rest  of  the  room,  but  it 
doesn't  look  so.     Since  the  light  of  the  win- 


204  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

dows  misses  it  and  it  catches  only  the  reflec- 
tion of  the  hght,  the  white  color  (if  it  is 
white)  takes  on  a  grayish  tint,  and  too,  most 
ceilings  have  their  tones  dulled  by  time;  so 
the  impression  a  room  gives  one  is  that  the 
floor  and  walls  are  light  and  the  ceiling  is  in 
shadow.  To  get  this  effect  in  the  theater  is 
essential  if  we  are  to  give  the  scene  its 
precious  tinge  of  naturalness;  and  this  can- 
not be  done  if  there  is  a  dead  white  canopy 
overhead  reflecting  its  light  on  everything  in 
the  room.  If  the  scenic  artist  is  asked  why 
he  insists  on  painting  his  ceilings  so  light  he 
will  doubtless  answer,  with  truth,  that  that 
is  the  way  they  are  painted  in  real  life;  but 
he  forgets  that  the  effects  sought  in  the  the- 
ater must  be  contrived  by  artificial  means, 
and  that  he  must  aid  the  impression  by  paint- 
ing his  ceiling  darker  to  enable  the  electri- 
cian to  suggest  the  shadows  that  normally 
would  be  on  it. 

As  a  rule  too  little  attention  is  paid  to 
natural  lighting  in  scenic  designing.  The 
artist  certainly  should  always  bear  in  mind, 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    205 

when  placing  his  shadows,  where  the  sunhght 
is  supposed  to  be  coming  from,  and  some- 
times this  vastly  important  consideration 
seems  never  to  have  crossed  his  mind.  He 
should  paint  his  scene  with  the  sun  coming 
from  the  right  or  left  as  best  suits  the  design, 
and  it  should  be  possible  to  arrange  the  light- 
ing accordingly.  If  the  sun  is  supposed  to 
be  coming  from  the  right,  this  should  surely 
be  indicated  by  the  scene  painter  as  well  as 
the  electrician.  On  the  opposite  side  of  the 
room  from  the  sun  the  colors  should  be  some- 
what subdued,  though  not  crudely  so,  and 
the  light  should  be  the  reflected  light  we  get 
in  nature.  Footlights  too  should  be  used  to 
suggest  reflected  light  only.  Such  observa- 
tions as  these  seem  almost  too  elementary  to 
be  worth  setting  down,  but  the  carelessness 
of  producers  with  regard  to  their  lighting  is 
astonishing.  I  have  in  mind  a  scene  which 
contained  a  large  French  window  at  the  rear. 
At  the  end  of  one  act  I  watched  the  sun  set 
through  this  window;  and  in  the  next  act  was 
amazed  to  see  it  rise  in  precisely  the  same 


206  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

place.  In  a  case  of  this  kind  there  may  not 
be  a  dozen  people  in  the  audience  who  will 
know  just  why  they  feel  that  something  is 
wrong,  but  a  great  many  of  them  will  have 
the  feeling  that  something  is  wrong,  that 
there  is  somehow  an  air  of  unreality,  a  false 
theatricahty ;  and  such  a  feehng  cannot  fail 
to  be  detrimental  to  the  actors  and  the  play. 

As  in  so  many  things  we  do  on  the  stage  it 
is  very  easy  to  be  too  clever  and  too  ingenious 
with  our  lights.  It  is  so  easy  to  make  the 
lighting  effects  more  interesting  than  the 
play,  for  the  moment,  and  so  rob  it  of  the 
attention  it  may  sadly  need  if  it  is  to  suc- 
ceed at  all.  The  first  act  of  a  play  which 
ran  on  Broadway — for  a  time — showed  a 
room  with  a  window  at  the  back.  Through 
the  window  could  be  seen  a  row  of  houses 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street.  The  time 
was  late  afternoon,  and  as  the  sunlight  grew 
dimmer  the  lights  in  the  distant  windows 
winked  on  one  by  one,  as  though  the  people 
behind  them  were  lighting  up  for  the  evening. 
This    spectacle    held    a    peculiar    fascination 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY    207 

for  the  audience.  Gradually  their  attention 
came  to  be  fixed  on  the  back  drop.  That  is  to 
say,  while  the  author  was  attempting  to  intro- 
duce his  characters,  and  state  their  relations 
with  each  other,  and  to  lay  down  the  neces- 
sary foundation  for  the  play,  the  audience 
were  engrossed  in  a  speculation  as  to  where 
the  next  light  would  appear  on  the  back 
drop  and  how  the  effect  was  managed.  This 
was,  it  seemed  to  me,  very  bad,  because  it  ran 
the  risk  of  sacrificing  the  whole  play  for  a 
momentary  theatrical  effect  which  really  had 
not  the  slightest  bearing  on  the  story.  The 
whole  of  any  play  rests  upon  the  preliminary 
material  that  is  given  in  the  first  act.  Often 
a  mere  sentence  or  two  in  the  first  act  may 
be  the  mainspring  of  powerful  situations  that 
come  later;  and  if  these  vital  bits  are  missed 
the  subsequent  acts  lose  much  of  their  mean- 
ing. The  play  in  question  was  one  of  those 
unexplained  failures;  it  seemed  to  have  every- 
thing in  its  favor,  but  lasted  only  a  week 
or  two.  I  should  not  insist  that  this  blemish 
in  the  first  act  accounted  for  the  failure,  but 


208  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

it  is  interesting  to  wonder  how  much  it  had 
to  do  with  it — interesting  since  the  effect  it- 
self was  quite  delightful  while  it  was  going 
on. 

It  should  always  be  borne  in  mind  that  the 
eye  is  much  quicker  than  the  ear.  Anything 
that  catches  the  eye  on  the  stage  has  a  definite 
effect;  it  either  helps  or  harms  the  play,  and 
I  believe  a  great  deal  of  money  is  wasted 
every  theatrical  season  because,  when  plan- 
ning our  mechanical  effects,  we  lose  sight  of 
this  fact.  A  mechanical  effect  is  not  justi- 
fied because  it  is  reahstic  or  ingenious.  A 
change  of  lights  which  merely  indicates  the 
time  of  day  is  wrong.  Unless  there  is  some- 
thing in  the  action  or  the  hues  referring  to 
the  fact  that  evening  is  approaching,  or  the 
sun  is  setting,  or  a  storm  is  brewing  it  is 
wrong  to  distract  the  attention  of  the  audi- 
ence from  what  is  being  said  by  contriving 
such  effects.  Of  course,  often  it  can  be  ar- 
ranged to  dim  the  lights  during  some  unim- 
portant scene  where  the  talk  is  not  of  much 
moment;  but  it  is,  I  think,  far  better  to  have 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY   209 

the  characters  refer  to  the  change  of  light 
in  some  way,  thus  making  it  a  part  of  the 
action,  or  else  leave  out  the  change  altogether. 

The  question  of  shadows  is  another  that  is 
always  causing  annoyance  to  actors  and  to 
audiences.  What  illusion  is  possible  for  the 
audience  if  they  see  an  actor  enter  the  door- 
way at  the  rear  of  the  stage  and  throw  his 
shadow  over  the  church  steeple  supposed  to 
be  in  the  village  eight  miles  away?  With 
such  a  start  as  this  for  his  scene,  how  is  the 
actor  going  to  carry  conviction?  And  the 
way  to  avoid  these  shadows,  so  irritating  to 
both  actor  and  audience,  is  so  simple  that 
one  hesitates  to  put  it  on  paper.  If  the  stand- 
ard lights  are  placed  at  least  nine  feet  high 
the  actor  can  pass  beneath  them,  and  not 
between  them  and  the  back  cloth! 

To  obtain  natural  lighting  the  light  should 
really  fall  on  the  stage  from  the  front  as  well 
as  from  the  top  and  sides.  But  in  most  the- 
aters, except  in  vaudeville  houses  where  a 
spot-light  is  thrown  from  the  gallery,  the  only 
front    light    is    provided    by    the    footlights. 


210  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

These  can  only  be  sparingly  used  or  they 
will  conflict  with  the  top  and  side  lights.  I 
think  the  best  way  this  front  lighting  can  be 
obtained  is  by  placing  a  series  of  "baby 
spots  "  in  the  balustrade  of  the  first  balcony; 
and  the  light  furnished  by  these,  supplement- 
ing those  on  the  stage,  will  help  greatly  in 
simulating  natural  lighting.  I  beheve  Gran- 
ville Barker  used  this  device  in  his  produc- 
tion of  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  If 
there  is  an  unnatural  luminance  about  the 
stage  there  will  be  a  sense  on  the  part  of  the 
audience,  however  undefined  it  may  be,  that 
there  is  an  unnaturalness,  a  theatricality, 
about  the  performance.  This  sense  places  an- 
other handicap  on  the  play,  makes  the  work 
of  the  actor  just  that  much  more  difficult. 

The  lighting  of  a  scene  at  night  where  the 
moon  is  supposed  to  provide  the  only  illumi- 
nation is  another  problem  that  has  always 
been  a  sore  trial  to  the  producer.  Experience 
has  taught  me  that  when  such  a  scene  opens 
— supposing  it  is  an  interior  set — the  audi- 
ence should  see  a  dimly-lighted  room.     The 


EFFECT  OF  REALISTIC  SCENERY   211 

flood  of  moonlight  will  appear  to  give  the 
only  light,  but  in  reahty  it  is  coming  from 
other  sources.  This  must  be  done  or  the 
actors  are  striving  against  hopeless  odds.  It 
is  frightfully  irritating,  after  a  time,  to  listen 
to  spoken  lines  and  be  unable  to  make  out  the 
faces  of  the  persons  speaking  them.  The 
actors  must  work  against  this  natural  irri- 
tation, and  it  may  take  them  the  rest  of  the 
evening  to  counteract  the  restlessness  such 
a  scene  may  engender.  So  if  it  is  impos- 
sible to  bring  on  some  candles  or  otherwise 
light  the  room  by  apparent  means,  I  have 
always  found  that  it  is  best  to  resort  to  a 
little  artifice.  After  giving  the  audience  time 
to  get  the  impression  of  a  dim  room,  lighted 
only  by  the  reflected  light  of  the  moon,  we 
may  assume  that  they  have  once  more  become 
engrossed  in  the  story  of  the  play.  Then  the 
electrician  may  be  instructed  to  coax  his  lights 
up  gradually  so  that  the  room  actually  be- 
comes lighter,  but  by  such  insensible  degrees 
that  the  audience,  interested  in  what  the 
actors  are  doing,  are  quite  unconscious  of  the 


212  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

change.  I  have  tried  this  many  times,  and 
not  once  have  I  heard  of  anyone  in  the  audi- 
ence detecting  the  little  trick;  not  even  those 
connected  with  the  stage.  They  may  have 
the  vague  impression,  after  a  time,  that  the 
room  is  brighter  than  they  thought  it  was 
at  first;  but  any  darkened  room  seems 
brighter  to  us  as  we  become  accustomed  to 
it;  and  thus  it  may  quite  conceivably  be  that 
this  device  adds  to  the  impression  of  reality. 
Indeed,  it  is  this  sort  of  "  reality "  only 
that  is  worth  striving  foy.  It  is  not  enough 
to  put  a  real  room  on  the  stage,  we  must  con- 
sider the  impression  a  real  room  makes  on 
us  and  attempt  to  reproduce  the  impression, 
not  the  room.  It  is  this  subtler,  and  as  a 
rule  simpler,  realism  which  serves  its  pur- 
pose— the  purpose  of  supplementing  the  im- 
pression of  reality  which  the  actors  try  to 
give. 


CHAPTER  XI 

MUSIC  AND  COSTUMES  VERSUS  THE 
ACTOR 

The  Work  of  Each  Specialist  Should  Be  Blended  into 
a  Coherent  Whole — The  Function  of  Costumes — Al- 
lowing for  the  Distraction  of  Striking  Costumes — The 
Play  Must  Be  Always  Supreme — Irving's  Clash  with 
His  Orchestra  Leader — The  Voice  of  the  Actor  the 
Melody  of  the   Piece,  All  Else  the   Accompaniment. 

A  DRAMATIC  production,  as  the  two 
preceding  chapters  indicate,  is  a  com- 
plete thing  made  up  of  many  parts. 
There  are  the  actors,  the  play,  the  scenery,  the 
lights,  the  costumes,  and  sometimes  the  "  in- 
cidental "  music.  All  of  these  parts,  how- 
ever, should  be  nicely  calculated  and  measured 
and  fitted  into  the  scheme.  Each  should  be 
kept  in  its  proper  place.  The  appeal  which 
we  seek  to  make  with  any  play  should  be  a 
clearly  defined  one,  and  all  the  accessories  we 
sunmion    to    assist    in    making    this    appeal 

213 


214  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

should  be  rigidly  shaped  and  subordinated 
that  they  may  contribute  to  the  welfare  of 
the  whole,  and  not  disturb  the  balance  by 
focusing  attention  unduly  upon  themselves. 
Helen  Faucit  says  of  the  Germans :  "  Their 
scenery  is  good,  appropriate,  harmonious,  and 
stands  as  it  always  should  in  subservience  to 
the  plot  and  the  human  interest  in  the  play: 
it  is  so  unostentatiously  good  that  you  never 
think  of  it.  So  the  costumes:  you  think  you 
see  the  persons  represented,  as  all  is  in  keep- 
ing, so  you  never  criticize  what  the  characters 
wear.  You  feel  at  once  they  looked  or  did 
not  look  as  they  should,  and  give  this  sub- 
ject no  further  heed.  Being  but  accessories 
at  the  best,  they  are  very  properly  only 
treated  as  such."  This  can  scarcely  be  said 
of  our  theater. 

So  often  there  seems  no  coherent  theme  in 
our  theatrical  productions.  The  scenery  is 
beautiful,  the  lighting  is  clever,  and  the  cos- 
tumes are  marvels  of  the  dressmaker's  art, 
but  there  is  no  particular  harmony  among 
them  all.     Each  specialist  has  developed  his 


MUSIC  AND  COSTUMES  215 

own  ideas;  but  there  has  been  no  unifying 
hand  to  blend  all  into  an  intelligible  and 
coherent  whole.  This  difficulty  could  be 
partly  met,  I  believe,  if  we  employed  a  cos- 
tume designer  for  modern  as  well  as  costume 
plays.  Most  managers  are  content  to  deal 
direct  with  costumers  like  Redfern  or  Madam 
Frances;  but  it  would  seem  to  be  much  safer, 
and  less  expensive  in  the  end,  to  have  a 
special  designer  to  work  in  harmony  with  the 
scenic  artist,  so  that  there  may  be  no  clash 
between  the  costumes  and  the  settings.  The 
designer  arranges  the  hangings  and  the 
draperies  so  that  they  blend  properly  with 
the  tints  of  the  walls  and  the  furniture  as 
well  as  with  the  costumes.  He  may  be  de- 
pended upon  to  plan  his  work  so  that  these 
accessories  will  merely  tend  to  suggest  the 
atmosphere  of  the  play  without  calling  atten- 
tion to  themselves. 

And  this  is  the  function  of  costumes:  to 
suggest  the  atmosphere  of  the  play.  If  they 
do  more  than  this  they  injure  more  than  they 
help.    The  constant  hmn  and  whisper  of  com- 


216  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

merit  aroused  by  striking  gowns  on  the  stage 
is  not  helpful.  Again  we  should  remind  our- 
selves that  the  play  is  the  thing,  and  that  it 
cannot  afford  to  share  the  attention  which 
should  be  paid  it.  The  temptation  to  use 
the  stage  as  a  milliner's  shop  or  a  costumer's 
display  room  is  one  that  some  men  seem 
unable  to  resist.  But  not  once,  to  my  knowl- 
edge, has  this  costly  game  ever  made  a  play 
a  success.  Aside  from  the  question  of  ex- 
pense it  is  just  as  detrimental  to  the  play  to 
dress  the  actresses  extravagantly  as  it  is  to 
decorate  the  stage  with  elaborate  and  unusual 
scenery.  The  more  unobtrusive  the  costumes 
can  be,  and  still  be  correct,  the  better.  Peo- 
ple do  not  come  to  the  legitimate  theater  to 
see  stunning  gowns;  if  that  is  what  they  are 
interested  in,  they  will  go  to  the  reviews  and 
musical  comedies  where  they  are  displayed 
on  a  large  scale.  But  in  the  legitimate 
theater  the  prime  interest  must  be  the  play 
itself. 

Some  plays  of  course  require  striking  cos- 
tumes;   but    even    in    such    cases    we    should 


MUSIC  AND  COSTUMES  217 

realize  that  the  notice  these  up-to-the-moment 
creations  are  to  attract  will  be  extraneous. 
We  should  arrange  the  play  so  that  such  no- 
tice will  not  interfere  with  the  concentration 
of  the  audience  on  the  story.  The  author,  if 
he  is  wise,  will  allow  for  the  distraction  cer- 
tain to  be  caused  by  the  entrance  of  an  actress 
in  an  unusual  and  stunning  gown.  He  can 
take  care  that  the  dialogue  is  of  no  real 
consequence  during  such  an  entrance,  so  that 
the  audience  may  have  a  chance  to  take 
in  the  dresses  and  then  be  ready  for  the  play 
to  go  on.  That  is,  far  from  relying  on  the 
smart  costumes  to  pull  our  play  to  success, 
we  should  regard  them  as  a  necessary  dis- 
Traction,  which  the  play  must  overcome. 

With  regard  to  music  also,  it  is  often  so 
difficult  to  impress  upon  the  mind  of  the  musi- 
cian that  his  music  is  meant  to  add  a  certain 
quality  to  the  performance,  to  be  a  modest 
accompaniment,  and  nothing  more.  He  finds 
it  hard  to  imderstand  that  the  moment  his 
music  is  noticed  for  itself,  it  defeats  the  very 
end  for  which  it  is  written.     The  producer 


218  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

who  knows  what  he  wants  explains  what  he 
wants  to  the  musician;  and  the  musician,  hav- 
ing found  out  what  the  producer  wants,  either 
goes  and  does  it  or  tells  the  producer  to  get 
someone  else  to  do  it.  The  musician  may  re- 
gard himself  as  an  artist  in  the  highest  sense 
of  the  word  and  may  consider  that  the  work 
required  is  far  beneath  his  dignity. 

This  suggests  a  little  story  about  Sir  Ar- 
thur Sullivan.  He  was  at  his  piano  one  after- 
noon thumping  away  at  what  seemed  to  be 
the  most  elementary  kind  of  a  finger  exercise. 
It  ran  something  like  this:  Tumpty  tumpty 
turn,  Tumpty  tumpty  tay,  Tumpty  tumpty. 
Tumpty  tumpty  tee,  A  friend  entered  and 
listened  with  a  shocked  and  grieved  expres- 
sion. 

"  Great  Scott,  Sullivan!  "  he  cried.  "  What 
are  you  doing?  " 

Sullivan  rephed  that  it  was  a  tune  for  his 
next  opera. 

"Nonsense!"  his  friend  remonstrated. 
"  You  surely  aren't  going  to  put  that  child- 
ish rubbish  in ! " 


MUSIC  AND  COSTUMES  219 

Sullivan  only  laughed  and  told  him  to  wait 
until  he  heard  the  opera.  The  opera  was 
The  Sorcerer;  and  the  music  accompanied 
Sir  William  Gilbert's  words  which  begin: 

"  My  name  is  Wellington  Wells^ 
Genius  of  magic  and  spells   ..." 

and  the  simple,  jaunty,  choppy  music  was 
precisely  what  was  needed.  No  one  thought 
of  the  music  at  all;  all  the  interest  was  cen- 
tered in  the  words,  which  was  what  Sullivan, 
thorough  artist  that  he  was,  desired.  Sulli- 
van was  not  only  a  great  composer,  of  his 
kind,  but  he  was  as  well  a  technician  who  did 
not  scorn  the  simple  when  simplicity  was  re- 
quired. He  realized,  in  this  instance,  his 
music  was  merely  an  accessory  to  Gilbert's 
words. 

Thus  in  the  legitimate  theater  the  words 
are  always  supreme.  I  am  aware  that  I  have 
repeated  this  often;  but  I  wonder  if  it  could 
be  repeated  too  often.  In  play  after  play 
that  we  see,  the  words  are  crowded  out  and 
choked  down  by  a  dozen  other  factors  of  the 


220  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

performance,  all  interesting  enough  in  them- 
selves, but  not  the  play,  not  what  the  people 
have  come  to  the  theater  to  see — and  not 
what  they  will  send  their  friends  to  see.  It 
is  something  of  an  undertaking  to  provide  an 
audience  with  sufficient  mental  food,  or  suffi- 
cient amusement,  sufficient  emotional  stimu- 
lation to  fill,  to  their  satisfaction,  an  entire 
evening  of  their  lives.  Only  by  touching 
their  imagination  deeply — and  they  cannot  be 
amused  if  their  imagination  is  not  touched — 
can  we  do  this.  Never  can  their  imagination 
be  touched  if  the  play  fails  to  provide  illu- 
sion, fails  to  disguise  itself,  fails  to  take  the 
audience  out  of  themselves,  and  make  them 
forget  the  theater  and  themselves.  Anything 
that  tends  to  crowd  the  words  of  the  play 
out  of  first  place  in  the  minds  of  those  in  the 
theater,  is  interfering  with  this  illusion,  is 
striking  at  the  vitals  of  the  play.  No  effort 
should  be  spared,  no  sacrifice  should  be 
shirked,  to  keep  the  spoken  word  supreme. 
Music  is  a  great  art,  and  she  has  her  own 
temples    where    she    is    worshiped,    but    the 


MUSIC  AND  COSTUMES  221 

legitimate  theater  is  not  one  of  them.  When 
she  is  called  to  help  her  sister  art  she  should 
come  to  serve;  she  should  leave  all  thoughts 
of  self  behind. 

My  mother,  Mrs.  Charles  Calvert,  in  her 
book,  Siocty-eight  Years  on  the  Stage,  says 
that  when  she  was  playing  in  Boston  in 
the  early  fifties  Rachel,  the  great  French  ac- 
tress, and  her  French  company,  came  to  the 
city.  At  her  final  performance,  in  addition 
to  the  evening's  bill,  Rachel  recited  the 
Marseillaise.  "  The  band  played  so  faintly 
that  you  could  only  catch  the  beat,  and 
Rachel's  words  rose  rhythmically  above  it. 
After  the  first  few  lines  she  snatched  a  tri- 
color and  raised  it  proudly  above  her  head, 
as  she  cried,  *  Aux  armes !  Aux  armes ! ' 
The  effect  was  electrical  ..."  But  this 
powerful  effect  could  never  have  been  ob- 
tained if  the  music  of  the  orchestra  had  not 
been  subordinated  to  Rachel's  voice,  and  to 
the  words  of  the  song.  It  is  possible  that 
the  music  of  the  Marseillaise  is  even  greater 
than  the  words;  but  in  this  case  the  words 


222  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

were   more    important    and    the    music    was 
merely  accessory. 

I  remember  many  years  ago,  when  I  was 
filling  an  engagement  with  the  late  Henry 
Irving,  there  was  a  passage  at  arms  between 
the  orchestra  leader  and  the  chief.  We  were 
rehearsing  Lord  Byron's  Werner,  This  play 
lent  itself  particularly  to  incidental  music, 
and  Irving  stopped  at  one  rehearsal  and  said 
to  the  conductor,  "I'd  like  to  give  this 
speech  to  music.  See  if  you  can  have  some- 
thing ready  for  me  next  time."  At  the  next 
rehearsal  the  music  was  ready  and  Irving 
tried  his  speech  with  it.  But  something  was 
wrong.  "  I  don't  like  that  music  somehow," 
said  Irving.  "  I  don't  feel  that  it  suits." 
The  orchestra  leader  saw  nothing  wrong 
with  it,  himself,  and  told  Irving  so  with 
some  emphasis.  But  Irving  insisted  that  they 
attempt  to  find  what  the  matter  was.  "  Let's 
try  it  without  the  flute,"  he  suggested.  This 
was  done,  and  Irving  gave  his  lines  with  it; 
but  still  the  music  seemed  out  of  place.  Next 
the  cornet  was  omitted,  but  still  the  result 


MUSIC  AND  COSTUMES  223 

was  unsatisfactory.  Then  it  was  tried  with- 
out the  trombone,  still  wrong.  So  they  went 
on,  leaving  out  all  of  the  other  instruments 
one  at  a  time,  until  it  came  time  to  do  with- 
out the  first  violin.  The  music  had  been 
written  for  the  first  viohn  (the  instrument 
played  by  the  orchestra  leader  himself)  and 
that  artist  objected  strongly  to  remaining 
silent.  But  the  piece  was  tried  without  him, 
and  Irving  found  it  to  be  exactly  what  he 
wanted  to  supplement  his  speech.  Loudly 
did  the  orchestra  leader  expostulate  with  Irv- 
ing, pointing  out,  with  many  flourishes  of  his 
bow,  that  if  the  violin  were  cut  out  there  was 
nothing  left  of  the  music,  since  the  melody 
was  gone.  But  Irving  turned  a  deaf  ear  to 
his  lamentations.  And  Irving  knew  what 
he  was  about.  He  knew  that  the  secret  of 
writing  music  to  accompany  the  voice  is  that 
the  voice  takes  the  place  of  the  melody.  It 
was  a  bit  of  a  blow  to  the  musician  in  this 
case,  for  he  had  grown  attached  to  his  little 
melody,  but  it  had  been  out  of  place.  If  it 
had  been  used  it  would  have  fought  Irving's 


224  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

voice  for  first  place,  and  thus  would  have 
defeated  the  end  for  which  it  had  been  com- 
posed. 

And  in  this  little  incident  lies  the  secret, 

I  believe,  of  mounting  plays  for  production. 

i  The  voice  of  the  actor  should  always  be  re- 

f    garded  as  the  melody;  and  scenery,  lights, 

I    properties,    costumes,    and    music    are    only 

meant  to  supply  the  accompaniment. 


h 


CHAPTER  XII 
THE  "  TONE  "  OF  A  PERFORMANCE 

Where  the  Real  Charm  of  a  Charming  Play  Lies — The 
Eleventh-hour  Rescue  of  Kismet — Keeping  One's 
Comedy  in  Key — Warfield's  Rage  in  The  Music 
Master — Tad  Mortimer's  Rebellion  in  The  Thunder- 
bolt— Wrong  Emphasis  Fatal  for  Othello  and  Many 
of  Shakespeare's  Plays — How  The  Concert  was 
Ruined  in  London — How  to  Insure  Harmony  of 
Tone — Actors  Are  Not  Mechanics — Keeping  Close  to 
the  Primaries. 

IN  any  production  there  should  be,  as 
we  have  seen,  a  central  theme  to  which 
all  factors  should  be  made  to  contribute. 
That  is,  the  appeal  of  any  play  must  be  a  lo-~ 
calized  one.  A  play  must  appeal  to  the  sense 
of  the  whimsical  primarily,  or  the  sense  of 
the  tragic  primarily,  or  the  pathetic,  or  the 
comic,  or  the  absurd — there  must  be  one 
primary  appeal  to  every  play,  there  must  not 
be  more  than  one,  we  cannot  mix  the  appeal — 

225 


226  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

that  is,  the  primary  appeal — without  disaster. 
There  must,  in  other  words,  be  an  atmos* 
^^^here  or  tone  to  which  the  whole  of  any  given 
performance  must  be  keyed.  And  this  atmos- 
phere counts  much  more  with  an  audience 
^than  skilled  technique.  It  is  the  atmosphere,, 
far  more  than  the  particular  incidents  of  the 
story,  that  remains  in  our  senses  after  we 
have  left  the  theater.  Most  people  have  seen 
a  play  and  liked  it  immensely,  tried  to  tell 
the  story  to  friends,  and  wondered,  after  a 
recital  of  the  unadorned  skeleton  of  the  ac- 
tion, what  there  was  in  the  play  that  was  so 
pleasing.  We  have,  in  such  cases,  been 
charmed  not  by  the  story  itself  half  so  much 
as  by  the  peculiar  atmosphere  or  tone  the 
actors  were  able  to  give  the  performance. 

CMost  plays  can  be  played  in  one  of  many 
ones;  and  often  a  great  deal  depends  upon 
the  one  sought  for  by  the  producer.  This  was 
illustrated  strikingly  by  the  experience  of 
Oscar  Asche  when  he  produced  Kismet  in 
London.  Asche  not  only  produced  the  play 
but  he  also  played  the  part  of  the  Beggar 


THE  "  TONE  "  OF  A  PERFORMANCE    227 

himself.  Otis  Skinner  played  the  part  in 
America.  Asche  had  rehearsed  Kismet  as  a 
tragic  drama,  the  drama  of  a  disappointed, 
hungry  life.  His  own  part  he  had  realized  as 
a  serious  study  of  an  aged  vagabond  who,  by 
a  peculiar  series  of  circumstances,  had  his  day. 
In  rehearsals  he  had  put  a  poignant  signifi- 
cance into  his  recurring  cry:  "Alms,  for  the 
love  of  Allah!"  It  typified  the  plaint  and 
prayer  of  a  broken-hearted,  disappointed  old 
man.  But  on  the  opening  night  of  the  play 
his  cry:  "Alms,  for  the  love  of  Allah!" 
tickled  the  audience  immensely,  and  they  re- 
warded it  with  hearty  laughter.  After  re- 
covering from  his  amazement,  Asche,  with  a 
splendid  eye  to  the  main  chance,  at  once 
shifted  his  whole  reading  of  the  part.  He 
tinged  it  with  comedy,  instead  of  pathos,  and 
thus  altered  the  tone  of  the  whole  play. 
Kismet  is  a  sort  of  an  Arabian  Nights  tale 
and  might  have  been  played  in  several  ways; 
but  the  curious,  fantastic,  semi-humorous, 
semi-tragic  tone  seemed,  on  experience,  the 
one    which    really    carried    the    play    to    the 


228  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

hearts  of  the  audience.  For  my  part  I  am 
sure  that  this  humorous  treatment  was  one 
of  the  big  factors  in  the  success  of  the 
piece.  It  gave  a  dehghtful  whimsicahty  to 
the  whole  thing;  so  that  even  when  the 
Beggar  sold  his  daughter  to  the  Rich  Man 
the  audience  were  amused  at  the  old  rascal 
instead  of  being  shocked,  as  Asche  (and  the 
author  perhaps)  had  supposed  they  would 
be.  I  beheve  if  the  play  had  been  pro- 
duced in  the  serious  tone  originally  attempted 
its  success  would  have  been  doubtful. 

It  may  be  objected  that  such  a  proceed- 
ing as  Asche's  is  truckling  to  the  mood  of 
the  audience,  at  the  expense  of  truth.  I  do 
not  think  this  is  valid.  To  my  mind  it  is 
j  rather  finding  truth  under  the  stimulus  of  ^ 
\  the  audience's  response.  We  are  striving  in 
the  production  of  any  play  to  make  the  emo- 
tions of  the  people  in  the  play  as  real  and 
moving  as  possible  to  the  people  in  the  the- 
ater. We  are  striving  to  shed  upon  the  story 
just  the  light  which  will  impart  the  strongest 
illusion  to  the  characters  and  incidents  in  it. 


THE  "  TONE  "  OF  A  PERFORMANCE    229 

That  emphasis  which  proves  on  experience 
to  be  the  one  that  gives  the  highest  degree  of 
veracity  to  the  play  is  the  correct  one  for  the 
play;  and  discovering  this  emphasis  is  dis- 
covering truth,  not  sacrificing  it. 

I  once  played  a  part  in  Captain  Drew  on 
Leave,  I  was  a  matter-of-fact,  commonplace 
husband  who  had  allowed  his  home  life  to  fall 
into  a  dull  routine.  My  wife  was  a  young 
and  pretty  woman  who,  since  our  two  sons 
had  been  away  at  school,  found  the  home 
rather  uninspiring.  As  the  husband  I  was 
something  of  a  gawk  and  the  audience 
laughed  at  everything  I  did.  But  in  the  last 
act  I  realize  that  my  wife  has  been  captivated 
by  the  dashing  young  Captain  Drew.  And 
with  this  realization  my  part  really  turned 
into  one  of  pathos.  In  this  lay  a  difficulty. 
I  had  to  take  great  care  that  the  audience 
did  not  come  to  regard  me  as  too  great  a  boor 
in  the  early  acts  or  they  would  refuse  to  take 
me  seriously  in  the  pathetic  scene  at  the  end, 
where  I  held  out  my  hands  to  my  wife,  say- 
ing simply,  "  Let's  go  up  to  Winchester  and 


230  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

see  the  boys."  I  tried  to  keep  this  scene  be- 
fore me  throughout  the  play;  I  tried  to  keep 
my  comedy  within  certain  bounds,  I  tried  to 
have  their  amusement  touched  with  affec- 
tion, not  contempt.  This  meant  that  this 
thought  had  to  govern  the  reading  of  aknost 
every  comedy  line;  and  I  do  not  believe  I 
ever  failed  to  touch  the  hearts  of  the  audi- 
ence with  the  pathos  at  the  end.  But  when 
I  left  the  company — as  I  had  only  been 
loaned  for  a  few  weeks — the  man  who  took 
my  place  revelled  so  much  in  his  comedy, 
in  acts  one  and  two,  that  when  the  last  act 
came  they  refused  to  take  him  seriously,  they 
laughed  at  him  uproariously  and  one  of  the 
biggest  moments  in  the  play  came  to  naught. 
It  seemed  to  me  that  he  had  allowed  himself 
to  forget  the  atmosphere  of  the  part;  his 
performance,  highly  amusing  though  it  was, 
was  out  of  key  with  the  proper  tone  of  the 
play. 

I  think  this  matter  of  keeping  in  key  was 
phrased  most  eloquently  by  the  old  stage 
manager  at  the  Lyceum  in  London.     Faust 


THE  "  TONE  "  OF  A  PERFORMANCE    231 

was  in  rehearsal  and  the  Brocken  scene  had 
been  reached.  This  scene  requires  a  con- 
siderable number  of  supers  and  they  were 
laughing  and  joking  with  each  other  through 
the  somber  scene,  in  bland  disregard  of  the 
effect  they  were  supposed  to  make.  The 
stage  manager  stood  it  for  a  time,  then 
yelled  indignantly,  "  'Ere,  'ere,  'ere!  Not 
so  'appy,  not  so  'appy!  You're  not  in  'Amp- 
stead,  you're  in  'ell! " 

iThe  atmosphere  of  the  play  must  dominate  j 
levery  actor's  work.    It  is  a  mistake  to  allow  J 
'clever   bits   of  business   to   creep   into    one's  \ 
performance  merely  because  they  are  cunning  ) 
and  momentarily  effective.     Very  frequently 
a  laugh  may  be  obtained  by  pointing  a  line 
with  humor;  but  it  is  wrong  to  do  it  if  the 
laugh  is  out  of  keeping  with  the  atmosphere 
^of   the    whole.      Very    frequently    the    actor 
playing  the  part  of  the  hero  can  color  his 
lines  with  sarcasm  and  deliver  a  body  blow 
to  the  villain;  but  if  the  hero  is  not  the  sort 
of  a  man  who  resorts  to  sarcasm,  if  this  will 
mean    a    discord    in    his    interpretation,    he 


232  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

achieves  a  momentary  effect  at  the  expense 
of  something  vastly  more  important. 

David  Warfield's  performance  in  the 
Miisic  Master  is  a  fine  example  of  beautifully 
sustained  atmosphere.  The  rage  of  the 
harmless  little  Music  Master  is  done  with 
splendid  artistry,  kept  perfectly  in  keep- 
ing with  the  tone  of  the  play.  An  ordinary 
actor  would  doubtless  have  thrown  all  his 
energy  into  that  rage  scene,  used  it  as  a 
means  of  displaying  his  great  power  of  voice 
and  range  of  emotional  power,  but  Warfield 
clung  faithfully  to  his  character.  His  rage, 
intense  and  bitter  as  it  is,  still  is  the  rage 
of  a  gentle,  timid  man  who  realizes  after  all 
how  futile  his  anger  is.  Like  a  hurt  child 
Warfield  impotently  bangs  some  sheets  of 
music  on  the  piano — and  how  infinitely  more 
moving  and  true  that  pathetic  action  is  than 
roaring  and  pacing  and  tearing  the  hair.  This 
was  the  work  of  a  great  artist,  who  was 
subduing  all  to  truth  and  simphcity. 

The  part  of  Tad  Mortimer  in  Pinero's 
The    Thunderbolt    required,    I    think,    some 


THE  "  TONE  "  OF  A  PERFORMANCE   233 

such  treatment  as  this.  Mortimer  is  a  man 
in  middle  age  who  has  always  been  dominated 
and  bullied  by  his  two  elder  brothers.  For 
the  first  half  of  the  play  we  see  him  as  a 
meek,  mild  spirit  accustomed  to  being  over- 
ridden by  his  relatives.  But  in  the  third  act 
he  is  driven  to  desperation  by  an  attack  made 
by  these  brothers  on  his  wife,  and  he  con- 
fronts them  with  a  violent  defiance.  When 
we  played  the  piece  in  London  George  Alex- 
ander played  the  part  of  Tad,  and  in  this  act 
he  threw  all  his  emotional  power  into  the 
fray.  He  played  the  scene  with  as  much 
fury  as  the  part  of  Cassius  requires  in  the 
quarrel  scene  with  Brutus.  This  was  surely 
decidedly  a  case  of  falling  completely  out 
of  the  atmosphere  of  the  character.  I  dis- 
cussed the  matter  with  Alexander,  but  he 
confronted  me  with  the  script  and  pointed 
out  that  Pinero  had  written  such  stage  di- 
rections as  "  with  fury "  and  "  goaded  to 
desperation " ;  but  still  I  believe  that  the 
fury  should  have  been  that  of  helpless,  long- 
suffering  nature,  the  desperation  of  the  sort 


234  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

that  comes  after  injustice  has  been  endured 
supinely;  and  both  should  be  expressed  as 
by  a  man  unused  to  asserting  himself,  a  man 
a  httle  frightened  at  his  own  rage.  This 
would  have  kept  the  character  consistent  and 
would  not  have  been  a  false  note. 

Othello  is  a  character  which  relies  for  its 
effectiveness  greatly  upon  the  tone  of  the 
actor's  work.  Shakespeare  created  a  man 
full  of  pride  in  his  own  powers,  whose  every 
act  is  touched  by  the  great  underlying  belief 
he  has  in  himself.  His  manner  is  grandiose, 
and  would  be  overbearing  and  offensive  were 
it  not  for  his  great  dignity.  Forbes-Robert- 
son and  Lewis  Waller  both  played  Othello 
and  failed  to  make  any  noteworthy  success. 
I  believe  the  failure  in  both  cases  was  due 
to  the  fact  that  those  actors  played  him  from 
the  juvenile  point  of  view.  They  made 
Othello  a  lover;  and  consequently  the  real 
tragedy  of  the  story,  indeed  the  point  of  it, 
was  lost.  Othello,  Lear,  Macbeth,  and  Corio- 
lanus  are  all  tragedies  of  over-conceit,  trage- 
dies of  the  downfall  of  men  who  had  an  exag- 


THE  "  TONE  "  OF  A  PERFORMANCE  235 

gerated  belief  in  their  power.  They  believe 
themselves  supermen,  and  the  tragedy  in  each 
play  comes  when,  because  of  this,  they  are 
hurled  from  their  high  place.  If  other  quali- 
ties are  emphasized  unduly  in  the  playing  of 
these  parts  they  lose  their  meaning,  and  fail- 
ure is  likely  to  result.  The  atmosphere  of 
such  characters  must  be  preserved  at  any 
cost. 

In  speaking  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Madame 
Modjeska  says:  "It  was  my  belief  that  in 
that  poetic  scene  Shakespeare  had  not  in- 
tended to  give  an  impression  of  sensuousness. 
These  two  children  are  unconscious  of  their 
passion.  They  meet  because  they  love,  be- 
cause they  want  to  be  together,  to  hear  each 
other's  voices  and  to  look  in  each  other's 
eyes  and  cherish  and  kiss  or  die. 

"  If  they  succumb  to  the  natural  law  and 
the  calling  of  their  southern  blood  it  is  not 
done  with  premeditation.  There  is  no  neces- 
sity either  to  remind  the  audience  what  has 
just  happened  in  Juliet's  room  by  such  natu- 
ralistic effects  as  a  disarranged  bed  or  the 


236  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

turning  of  a  key  of  a  locked  door  at  the 
nurse's  entrance  or  Romeo's  lacing  his  jerkin, 
and  a  dishevelled  Juliet  in  a  crepe  de  Chine 
nightgown.  Such  details  are  cheap  illustra- 
tions and  unworthy  of  a  true  artist." 

It  might  be  added  that  they  are  not  only 
"  cheap  illustrations  "  but  may  very  well  be 
fatal  to  the  play.  They  cloud  the  real  story, 
they  destroy  the  directness  of  its  appeal, 
and  mar  its  harmony;  they  interfere  with  the 
focus  of  the  production. 

It  may  be  said  that  we  are  splitting  hairs 
in  such  a  discussion  as  this.  It  may  be  stated 
that  a  theatrical  production  is  not  so  frail 
and  delicate  an  affair  as  we  may  seem  to 
imply;  that  whereas  a  few  trained  fiouls  may 
feel  such  dissonances,  the  bulk  of  the  audi- 
ence, who  come  to  be  interested  and  amused, 
will  enjoy  the  story  for  itself,  and  that  there 
will  be  an  end  of  it.  But  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  history  of  the  stage  is  full  of  inci- 
dents which  prove  that  this  subtle  matter  of 
atmosphere  will  have  its  effect  inexorably 
with  any  play  and  with  any  audience.     Two 


THE  "  TONE  "  OF  A  PERFORMANCE  237 

cases  occur  to  me.  I  am  told  that  when  The 
Maneuvers  of  Jane,  by  Henry  Arthur  Jones, 
was  first  produced  in  London  it  was  treated 
as  light  comedy.  But  as  such  it  came  peril- 
ously near  to  ignominious  failure.  Rehears- 
als were  called  for  the  morning;  and  on  the 
second  night  the  comedy  was  greatly  broad- 
ened until  it  verged  on  farce.  It  is  said  that 
this  change  saved  the  play.  And  the  prin- 
ciple worked  conversely  with  that  wonderful 
Belasco  production.  The  Concert.  The 
haunting  butterfly  atmosphere  of  that  play 
was  ruined  by  the  broad  tone  in  which  it  was 
played  in  London.  In  New  York  the  treat- 
ment had  been  so  delicate  that  the  coarseness 
of  the  central  situation  was  never  apparent. 
In  London  a  different  interpretation  was 
used;  and  the  situation  degenerated  to  coarse- 
ness and  vulgarity — and  the  play  was  not  a 
success  in  England. 

/    It  is,  then,  for  the  producer  to  find  the 

[correct  tone  of  any  new  play.     He  should, 

it  seems  to  me,  have  a  round  table  discusX 

sion  with  his  company  before  rehearsals  beginf 


K^ 


"^^^^^^-^ 


:^238  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

for  the  purpose  of  giving  them  a  general  no- 
tion of  what  he  conceives  the  atmosphere  of 
the  play  to  be.  He  should  make  as  clear  as 
lie  can  the  particular  emphasis  he  wishes  to 
give  the  piece,  the  tone  of  it,  the  way  he 
thinks  the  various  strands  of  interest  and 
character  can  best  be  woven  into  a  coher- 
ent pattern.  All  of  this  preliminary  talk 
will  prove  of  great  help  to  the  actors  when 
they  come  to  study  their  parts.  It  gives 
them  a  start  in  the  right  direction  and  stimu- 
lates their  thinking  along  the  proper  lines. 
They  have  a  general  notion  of  the  play  to 
begin  with;  and  as  they  read  their  own  lines 
they  cannot  fail  to  apply  them  to  the  main 
story  as  they  conceive  it.  If  their  original 
conception  and  the  producer's  are  the  same 
a  great  deal  of  time  and  energy  may  be 
saved. 

I  believe  that  if  this  harmony  and  smooth- 
ness is  to  be  imparted  to  a  production  by 
the  producer,  there  must  be  a  certain  har- 
mony and  smoothness  in  his  relations  with 
the    members    of    his    company.      The    best 


I 


THE  "  TONE  "  OF  A  PERFORMANCE   239 

policy  is  surely  for  the  producer  to  treat 
the  company  as  comrades  who  are  working 
with  him  for  the  success  of  the  play.  It  is 
understood,  of  course,  that  the  ultimate  au- 
thority must  rest  with  the  producer,  since  it 
is  his  job  to  co-ordinate  the  work  of  all;  but 
the  days  of  the  drill  sergeant  producer  are 
numbered.  Shakespeare  said,  "  It  is  excellent 
to  have  a  giant's  strength,  but  it  is  tyrannous 
to  use  it  like  a  giant."  With  regard  to  pro- 
ducing the  manager  has  all  the  power,  but 
it  is  not  only  tyrannous  for  him  to  use  it 
like  a  giant,  it  is  absurd  and  fatal  as  a  busi- 
ness policy.  The  good  producer's  methods 
are  persuasive,  not  commanding.  It  is  only 
the  foolish  producer  who  thinks  he  knows 
everything  who  will  use  the  bludgeon;  or 
else  it  is  the  man  who  is  aware  of  his  limi- 
tation, and  who  relies  on  bluster  to  avoid 
being  found  out.  The  actor  cannot  do  his 
best  unless  he  is  allowed  a  free  rein,  to  a 
certain  extent,  in  the  working  out  of  his 
character.  I  do  not  believe  in  forcing  a  con- 
ception of  a  part  on  an  actor.    It  is  rarely  a 


240  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

good  thing  to  force  a  man  into  a  reading  he 
does  not  "  feel " — that  is  uncongenial  to  him. 
But  if,  instead  of  going  at  him  rough-shod, 
the  producer  requests  him  to  try  it  the  new 
way  once,  he  may  often  swing  round  him- 
self. 

It  is  wrong  to  regard  the  company  as  a 
group  of  mechanics.  If  they  are  mechanics 
no  one  is  to  blame  for  their  being  in  the  play 
except  the  producer  who  engaged  them.  And 
if  they  are  treated  as  mechanics  their  work  is 
pretty  apt  to  be  mechanical.  Unless  they  are 
given  freedom  in  the  expression  of  what  they 
feel  in  their  own  way,  so  far  as  possible,  how 
can  the  producer  expect  their  ultimate  per- 
formance to  have  much  spontaneity  and  natu- 
ralness about  it?  There  are  stars — so-called 
• — who  seem  to  prefer  to  surround  themselves 
with  soulless  mechanics  presumably  that  their 
own  work  may  shine  in  contrast;  but  such  a 
policy  does  the  ambitious  star  more  harm 
than  good.  In  the  case  of  a  road  company, 
where  the  actors  have  been  told  to  copy  the 
original  company  in  every  detail,  the  work  is 


THE  "  TONE  "  OF  A  PERFORMANCE   241 

mechanical,  however  clever  the  particular 
actors  may  be;  but  in  shaping  up  a  new  play 
for  its  maiden  performance  the  greatest  pro= 
ducer  is  the  one  who  sets  himself  merely  to 
enable  his  actors  to  give  better  performances 
than  they  have  ever  given  before.  That  is 
the  surest  way  for  the  producer's  own  work 
to  prove  successful. 

That  is,  the  well-being  of  the  play  must  | 
come  first  of  all  in  the  minds  of  every  single  ! 
person  connected  with  its  production.     That, 
it  would  seem,  is  a  simple  and  obvious  pri- 
mary  upon  which  to   base   all   our   work — 
but  like  so  many  simple,  primary  things  it  is 
often  forgotten,  as  each  struggles  to  thrust 
himself  forward;  forgetting,  apparently,  that 
the  success  of  the  play  is  the  only  thing  that 
can   bring  advancement  to   those   associated 
with  it!     If  we  would  keep  our  primaries  in 
mind!    If  we  would  keep  in  mind — what  we 
all  know  well  enough — that  the  greatest  ef- 
fects of  the  producer's   art,   and   the   play-  / 
Wright's  art,  and  the  actor's  art  are  simple' 
effects  whose  great  appeal  lies  in  their  sim-  * 


242  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

plicity  and  truth!  I  think  there  would  be 
fewer  failures.  I  believe  in  most  failures 
we  will  find  that  somewhere  the  primary 
things  were  forgotten. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
TRADITIONS 

Lest  We  Forget  "—The  "  Old-fashioned  "  Methods  of 
Ten  or  Twenty  Years  Ago — Methods  Change^  but  Art 
Is  Constant — No  Temple  for  the  Precious  Lore  of  the 
Actor's  Art — There  Must  Have  Been  Great  Actors 
to  Perform  the  Great  Plays  of  the  Past — The  Strong 
Appeal  of  the  Old  Method — Expressing  Emotion  and 
Repressing  Emotion — Gordon  Craig,  the  Passionate 
Dilettante — "  Unattached  "  Cleverness. 


H 


ANGING  inconspicuously  and  rather 
forlornly  in  the  smoking-room  of  the 
Cohan  Theater  in  New  York  City  is 
a  yellowish  old  lithograph  on  which  are  the 
portraits  (and  very  poor  portraits  they  are!) 
of  a  score  or  more  of  the  famous  actors  of  the 
past.  Booth  is  there,  and  the  elder  Sothern, 
and  Salvini,  and  Modjeska,  and  Kean,  and 
Irving,  and  many  others.  Mighty  names  they 
were  not  so  many  years  ago;  men  and  women 
who  had  touched  the  heart  of  nations  with 
their  art,  who  had  numbered  their  admirers 

243 


244  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

by  the  thousands.  And  under  their  portraits 
is  the  tragically  significant  legend:  "Lest 
We  Forget!"  The  portraits  of  men  and 
women  who  a  few  short  years  ago  were  recog- 
nized over  the  world  as  great  artists,  grouped 
together  over  that  humiliating  legend  in  the 
smoking-room  of  a  theater! 

I  believe  that  the  art  of  acting  suffers  more 
from  change  of  method  than  any  other — with 
the  possible  exception  of  the  art  of  playwrit- 
ing.  The  values  are  ever-shifting,  ever  new. 
We  strive  in  one  generation  to  avoid  the 
very  things  we  most  sought  to  do  in  the  pre- 
ceding one.  The  methods  which  we  regard 
as  the  ultimate  reach  at  the  present  time  will 
presumably  be  obsolete  in  ten  or  fifteen  years. 
Those  actors  who,  in  the  seventies,  were  re- 
ceived with  open  arms  by  an  adoring  public 
would  probably  be  laughed  off  the  stage  to- 
day. The  art  of  the  actor  is  a  most  sensitive 
one,  susceptible  to  every  influence  varying 
fads  of  fashion  and  thought  may  bring  to 
bear.  It  is  on  the  stage  that  we  find  the 
most   faithful   expression    of   the    moods    of 


TRADITIONS  245 

thought  which  are  peculiar  to  each  genera- 
tion; and  which  make  each  generation  "mod- 
ern "  and  those  that  have  gone  before  "  old- 
fashioned."  This  may  be  the  reason  why  we 
know  so  little  of  the  methods  our  forefathers 
followed,  why  tradition  pays  so  lamentably 
small  a  part  in  shaping  our  work  today.  The 
young  actor  is  likely  to  take  the  attitude 
that  he  must  dehberately  shut  his  eyes  to 
the  old-fashioned  ways,  and  model  his  work 
on  the  methods  of  the  successful  actors  of 
his  own  time.  To  a  certain  extent  this  is  very 
true,  of  course,  but  only  to  a  certain  extent. 
The  novice  should  not  lose  sight  of  the 
lact  that  after  all  it  is  not  the  art  of  the 
Jactor  that  changes,  it  is  only  the  method. 
The  material  we  work  with  is  the  same; 
though  each  season  or  two  we  shape  it  ac- 
cording to  new  patterns.  The  art  of  the 
actor,  the  art  of  making  stage  people  and 
stage  emotions  real  to  those  in  the  theater, 
has  never  changed.  We  adapt  ourselves  to 
the  ever-changing  tastes,  but  our  end  is  al- 
ways the  same.    Vogue  has  a  profound  influ- 


246         PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

ence  on  the  actor's  methods;  but  it  is  wrong 
to  confuse  vogue  with  art.  It  is  a  grievous 
error — a  great  misfortune — that  we  pay  so 
little  heed  to  the  few  traditions  of  our  craft 
which  we  have.  It  is  a  great  pity  that  so 
much  of  the  past  has  been  lost.  Instead  of 
shaping  our  work  and  guiding  our  progress 
by  fixed  standards  which  have  grown  up 
through  centuries — as  the  painter  or  the 
sculptor  does — we  are  constantly  setting  up 
new  standards;  we  are  always  beginning  over 
again. 

This  is  partly  true  because  of  the  constant 
jchange  in  method  (which  is  only  superficial), 
land  partly  because  actors  are  a  happy-go- 
lucky  lot.  They  allow  the  precious  lore  of 
their  profession  to  remain  scattered  over  the 
country  in  countless  museums  and  libraries, 
and  private  collections.  They  have  never 
taken  the  trouble  to  found  a  temple  of  their 
own.  The  stage  should  have  a  library  of  its 
own,  a  museum  of  its  own,  where  the  history 
of  the  actor's  art  could  be  coherently  pre- 
served, and  studied.     In  the  library  of  the 


TRADITIONS  247 

Players'  Club  of  New  York  is  the  only  note- 
worthy collection  of  theater  lore  in  this  coun- 
try; and  while  this  collection  is  valuable  and 
interesting,  it,  of  course,  fails  to  cover  the 
ground  in  any  comprehensive  way. 

How  much  of  inestimable  value  for  the 
beginning  actor  there  would  be  in  such  a 
study,  we  can  only  guess.  But  the  meager 
facts  we  are  able  to  glean  from  the  past  are 
sufficient  to  tell  us  that  there  were  in  the 
old  days  great  actors  of  whom  we  know  little 
or  nothing.  In  my  youth  I  read  everything 
I  could  lay  my  hands  on  that  related  to 
Shakespeare  and  his  time;  and  I  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  great  plays  would  never 
have  been  written  had  there  not  been  a  bril- 
liant company   of  actors   to   perform   them. 

We  know  that  in  most  cases  Shakespeare 
wrote  with  definite  actors  in  mind.  He  was 
closely  associated  with  them  and  knew  their 
abihties  to  a  nicety,  no  doubt.  He  could 
never  have  written  his  great  tragedies  by 
keeping  any  but  exceedingly  fine  actors  in 
mind.     It  is  too  bad  we  cannot  know  the 


248  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

work  of  those  actors,  as  we  know  the  work 
of  Shakespeare.  It  is  too  bad  that  the  actor 
is  denied  such  a  classical  standard  of  excel- 
lence as  that  provided  the  playwright  by 
Shakespeare's  plays.  Some  actors'  names 
have  come  down  to  us  in  association  with 
Shakespeare's  time;  we  know  there  were  ex- 
cellent actors — Richard  Burbage,  WiUiam 
Kemp,  John  Heming,  Henry  Condell,  and 
some  others,  but  we  know  nothing  of  their 
art.  How,  in  that  distant  time,  they  went 
about  it  to  equip  themselves  for  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  greatest  dramas  in  the  Eng- 
lish language,  we  have  not  the  remotest  idea. 
Their  art,  which  must  have  been  almost  as 
remarkable  as  Shakespeare's  own,  died  with 
them. 

There  are  plenty  of  biographies  of  famous 
actors  of  the  past,  but  those  tell  mostly  of 
great  triumphs,  not  of  the  methods  that  made 
those  triumphs  possible.  In  the  lives  of 
Edwin  Booth,  Henry  Irving,  and  the  many 
others  we  may  read,  we  get  no  sense  of  how 
they   acted,   only   of  the  great  heights   they 


TRADITIONS  249 

reached.  Ristori  gives  us  some  insight  into 
her  technical  methods;  Joseph  Jefferson,  in 
his  long  autobiography,  writes  a  few  pages 
that  are  of  great  value.  But  there  are  only 
a  few  oases  in  the  desert.  For  the  most  part 
these  books  are  personal  history;  interesting 
enough,  but  of  little  real  help  to  the  ambi- 
tious beginner,  who  could  probably  be  helped 
so  much  had  the  giants  of  the  past  bequeathed 
their  wisdom  to  posterity.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  we  would  all  be  better  actors  for  such 
reading.  Certainly  it  would  seem  that  the 
great  artists  who  have  attained  enduring  fame 
were  able  to  put  a  quality  into  their  work 
which  we,  of  today,  have  lost.  We  never 
hear  today  of  ten  thousand  people  swarming 
around  a  hotel  to  bid  farewell  to  a  retiring 
actress  as  they  did  to  Charlotte  Cushman. 
We  do  have  actors  who  are  widely  known  and 
regarded  with  a  certain  affection,  but  I  do 
not  believe  their  admirers  have  ever  tried 
to  draw  their  carriages  through  the  streets, 
as  they  did  Modjeska's  in  Dublin.  There 
must  have  been  something  in  the  ''  old-fash- 


250  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

ioned  "  way  of  acting  that  took  a  powerful 
hold  on  the  heart  strings.  It  is  a  pity  we 
have  no  way  of  knowing  what  it  was. 

The  vigor  and  power  of  the  old  way  of 
doing  things  was  brought  home  to  me  when 
I  played  Ives  in  The  Dancing  Girl,  That 
play  was  indicted  by  the  critics  as  an  old- 
fashioned  play.  Old-fashioned  or  not,  it  did 
make  certain  demands  on  the  actor,  called 
out  certain  faculties,  which  modern  plays 
do  not.  I  tried  to  play  my  part  as  it  was 
written,  in  key  with  the  tone  of  the  play.  I 
have  never  been  so  severely  criticized  in  my 
life.  The  press  flayed  me  for  my  shockingly 
antiquated  methods.  But  I  beheve  I  played 
the  part  the  way  it  was  written,  I  believe  I 
allowed  myself  to  be  guided  by  the  author's 
reasoning.  The  strange  thing  about  this  ex- 
perience was  that  in  spite  of  the  disfavor  of 
the  critics,  I  never  got  such  hearty  applause 
from  any  audience  before  or  since!  I  do  not 
believe  I  ever  played  a  part  where  I  felt  so 
vividly  the  response  of  the  audience.  My  in- 
dividual performance  seemed  out  of  keeping 


TRADITIONS  251 

with  the  rest  of  the  play,  I  know,  because  Sir 
Herbert  Tree  and  his  company,  who  played 
the  piece,  attempted  to  bring  it  up-to-date 
by  applying  modern  methods  of  acting  to  it. 
But  it  was  not  a  modern  play,  and  did  not 
lend  itself  to  the  modern  way  of  acting.  The 
production  was  not  a  success;  but  I  think  it 
very  likely  that  it  might  have  been,  if  it  had 
been  played  in  the  proper  melodramatic  key 
for  which  it  had  been  written,  in  which  it  had 
been  played  with  great  success  years  before. 

Something  there  was  in  that  old  technique 
which  found  the  hearts  of  the  pubhc  as  we 
rarely  do  today.  The  plays  that  have  liveci^ 
through  the  centuries  all  have  tremendous 
acting  parts.  They  are  parts  which  give  the 
actor  great  opportunities,  but  they  also  place 
heavy  demands  upon  him.  Those  demands 
must  have  been  met  by  the  old  actors,  or  the 
plays  would  not  have  lived.  How  silly  it  is 
therefore  to  deride  the  old  schools  of  acting. 
How  unfortunate  that  we  are  not  able  to 
benefit  by  their  sound  traditions. 

I  do  not  want  to  lay  myself  open  to  the 


252  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

charge  of  being  out  of  date.  I  realize  that 
the  restrained,  simple  way  of  expressing  emo- 
tion may  be  quite  as  artistic  as  the  more 
forceful  method  of  the  past.  But  I  think 
actors  are  likely  to  fall  into  the  same  fault 
that  some  painters  have  done.  I  think  there 
is  a  tendency  toward  futurism  and  post-im- 
pressionism in  much  of  the  very  modern  act- 
ing. In  both  cases  the  aim  is  to  achieve  cer- 
tain praiseworthy  results  unhampered  by  tra- 
dition and  technique.  But  before  an  actor 
is  justified  in  throwing  technique  to  the 
winds,  he  must  know  very  well  what  he  is 
throwing  away.  I  am  sure  that  the  attempt 
to  gain  originality  by  relying  on  enthusiasm 
and  imagination  is  a  dangerous  course  for 
the  young  actor  to  follow.  It  is  only  the 
master  of  technique  who  is  able  to  rise  above 
it,  and  discard  it  as  his  guide. 

The  desire  for  originality  has  led  many 
worthy  beings  astray.  Gordon  Craig,  with 
his  designs  for  stage  settings,  has  won  some 
distinction  on  the  Continent,  especially  in 
Russia,  where  he  is  hailed  as  a  great  inno- 


TRADITIONS  253 

vator,  a  great  creator.  I  have  no  desire  to 
deprecate  his  work,  much  of  which  is  exceed- 
ingly clever;  but  I  think  his  achievement 
would  be  much  more  noteworthy  and  endur- 
ing (if  he  insists  on  working  for  the  stage), 
if  he  curbed  his  originality  and  directed  it 
more  in  accordance  with  the  history  and  tra- 
dition of  the  theater.  In  his  writings  he  con- 
tinually attacks  the  actor,  evidently  regard- 
ing him  as  a  superfluity.  He  says  that  if  he 
had  his  way  all  actors  would  wear  masks  that 
they  might  not  interfere  with  his  great  con- 
ceptions. His  place,  I  think,  would  be  much 
higher  if  he  realized  that  his  work,  in  itself, 
has  nothing  in  common  with  that  of  the  actor. 
It  really  has  no  place  on  the  stage.  He  is  a 
clever  dilettante  whose  work  is  designed  for 
the  drawing-room,  not  the  stage. 

His  design  for  Macbeth's  castle  is  a  case 
in  point.  On  the  left  side  of  the  stage  is 
the  castle  stretching  its  gloomy  length  be- 
fore us.  It  is  a  dismal,  forbidding  building, 
the  only  relief  to  its  bare  walls  being  a  suc- 
cession   of    semicircular    buttresses    as    plain 


254  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

and  uninviting  to  the  eye  as  the  castle  itself. 
The  bleak  walls  are  unadorned.  There  are 
steps  which  extend  across  the  stage  from 
the  castle  to  the  opposite  side,  filling  the  pic- 
ture. They  also  are  innocent  of  adornment 
of  any  kind.  The  impression  given  is  one 
of  utter  desolation.  This  was  no  doubt  in- 
tended by  the  designer  to  convey  an  impres- 
sion of  the  atmosphere  of  tragedy,  to  pre- 
pare us  for  the  terrible  events  about  to  take 
place.  But  this  scene  was  Gordon  Craig's 
idea,  not  Shakespeare's.  Shakespeare's  de- 
scription of  the  castle  is  as  follows: 

"  This  castle  hath  a  pleasant  seat.     The  air 
Nimbly  and  sweetly  commends  itself 
Unto  our  gentle  senses. 

This  guest  of  summer, 
The  temple-haunting  martlet,  does  approve 
By  his  loved  masonry  that  the  Heaven's  breath 
Smells  wooingly  here:  no  jutty,  frieze, 
Buttress,  nor  coign  of  vantage,  but  this  bird 
Hath  made  his  pendant  bed  and  procreant  cradle; 
Where  they  most  breed  and  haunt,  I  have  observed 
The  air  is  delicate." 

I  should  consider  this  documentary  proof 


TRADITIONS  255 

that  in  this  particular  design  at  any  rate 
Craig  had  thrown  aside  a  great  deal  more 
than  technique  and  tradition  in  the  effort  to 
gain  originality.  I  think,  too,  it  illustrates 
very  well  the  excesses  into  which  we  are  apt 
to  be  led  if  our  only  purpose  is  to  be  ultra- 
modern and  original.  Once  we  cast  adrift 
and  depend  upon  our  own  cleverness  to  lead 
us  we  are  pretty  sure  to  stray  far  from  the 
course.  Craig's  work,  in  this  case,  was  not 
attempting  to  interpret  Shakespeare,  or  to 
serve  the  welfare  of  the  play.  There  was 
nothing  in  the  scene  he  imagined  to  supple- 
ment the  lines  to  be  spoken  by  the  actors. 
His  design  stood  alone  and  apart  from  the 
play  of  Macbeth.  It  expressed  one  of  Mr. 
Craig's  ideas;  it  did  not  express,  or  seek  to 
express  anything  else;  it  bore  no  connection 
with  Shakespeare's  play  and  thus,  as  an  in- 
tegral part  in  the  production  of  Macbeth,  it 
had  no  place. 

So  it  is  with  acting.  The  moment  we  per- 
mit ourselves  to  become  blinded  to  the  fact 
that  a  play  when  performed  on  the  stage  is 


256  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

a  composite,  made  up  of  several  factors  each 
of  which  must  be  co-ordinated  with  the  others, 
we  fall  into  just  the  mistake  that  Mr.  Craig 
did.  We  create,  out  of  ourselves,  a  highly 
original  and  possibly  clever  thing,  but  it  has 
no  value  for  anyone  except  as  a  bit  of  original 
cleverness.  I  think,  at  times,  that  the  mod- 
ern attitude  toward  acting  is  apt  to  en- 
courage this  sort  of  "  unattached "  clever- 
ness; and  I  beheve  a  greater  regard  for  the 
in  such  cases;  surely  it  has  been  creative  art! 
of  what  the  experience  of  those  who  have 
gone  before  has  taught,  would  keep  many  an 
impetuous  young  actor  from  making  costly 
indiscretions  which  mar  his  career  and  multi- 
ply his  difficulties. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
THE  ART  OF  ACTING 

Is  Acting  a  Dependent^  Imitative  Art^  or  Is  It  Crea- 
tive?— Two  Insignificant  Plays,  Rip  Van  Winkle  and 
The  Music  Master,  Which  Actors  Made  Enormous 
Successes — The  Folly  of  Comparing  the  Art  of  the 
Actor  with  That  of  the  Poet  or  Painter — When  a 
Play  Is  a  Play — Why  the  Actor's  Work  Is  Creative 
and  Not  Imitative — The  Place  of  the  Actor's  Art. 

1FEEL  that  before  I  conclude  these  ob- 
servations I  should  say  a  word  in  de- 
fense of  the  actor's  art.  I  believe  in 
many  quarters  the  actor  is  sadly  misunder- 
stood. He  is  likely  to  be  regarded  patroniz- 
ingly by  the  members  of  other  arts;  he  is 
told  that  his  art  is  an  imitative  one  as  con- 
trasted with  that  of  the  painter  and  the 
writer,  which  are  creative.  By  many,  even 
in  this  day,  the  actor  is  regarded  as  a  trouba- 
dour or  vagabond  as  he  was  in  old  English 
times.  It  is  strange  that  that  prejudice 
should  chng  to  the  actor. 

257 


258  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

I  believe — and  of  course  I  know  there  are 
many  who  agree — that  the  art  of  the  actor  is 
quite  as  dignified,  quite  as  "  creative,"  and 
perhaps  even  more  vital  and  potent  than  any- 
other  of  the  fine  arts.  But  by  many  we  are 
considered  disciples  of  a  "  minor  "  art  because 
it  is  pointed  out  that  we  must  depend  upon 
the  dramatic  author  for  our  material;  that 
we  merely  "  imitate  "  or  reproduce  his  con- 
ceptions. Anyone  who  knows  the  real  story 
of  a  play's  precarious  journey  to  public  favor, 
knows  how  often  that  process  is  reversed: 
knows  how  often  the  playwright  relies  on  the 
art  of  the  actor  to  endow  his  characters  with 
life,  knows  how  often  a  play,  in  the  hands 
of  the  actors,  grows  far  beyond  the  concep- 
tion of  the  author.  In  my  own  case  I  have 
often  been  compelled  to  play  characters  which 
have  been  quite  impossible  and  absurd  as  the 
author  conceived  them.  I  have  felt  that  I 
would  sooner  carry  bricks  up  a  ladder  than 
earn  my  living  by  perpetrating  such  trash 
with  pen  and  paper.  I  believe  the  faculties 
I  have  brought  to  the   "  interpretation "  of 


THE  ART  OF  ACTING  259 

such  characters  to  be  of  a  much  higher  order 
than  those  the  author  employed  in  writing 
them.  I  have  had  to  tax  my  own  powers  to 
the  utmost  to  overcome  the  author's  deficien- 
cies. Surely  my  art  has  not  been  imitative 
in  such  cases;  surely  it  has  been  creative  art! 
The  play  of  Bip  Van  Winkle  is  a  case  in 
point.  It  was  founded  on  a  short  story  by 
Washington  Irving.  As  a  short  story  it  has 
its  place  in  the  literature  of  this  country; 
but,  as  a  play,  it  is  remembered  as  a  vehicle 
used  by  Joseph  Jefferson.  It  is  common 
knowledge  that  many  actors  had  been  struck 
with  the  possibilities  which  a  dramatization 
of  Washington  Irving's  story  possessed. 
They  saw  that  it  might  provide  a  splendid 
means  for  the  exploitation  of  their  art,  they 
felt  that  they  could  use  the  idea  as  a  vehicle. 
Many  authors  were  commissioned  to  try  their 
hands  at  refashioning  the  story  into  a  play; 
but  for  a  long  time  all  their  attempts  were 
unsuccessful.  Jefferson  then  took  it  up;  and 
he  actually  failed  in  it  at  the  start.  But  he 
stuck  to  his  guns  and  had  it  rewritten  again 


260  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

and  again.  For  years  he  worked  at  the  play, 
pohshing,  rearranging,  fitting  it  for  his  pur- 
pose. At  last  he  got  it  into  shape  so  that 
it  did  serve  his  purpose;  that  is  to  say,  it 
enabled  him  to  display  his  art  to  the  best 
advantage.  Millions  flocked  to  see  his  per- 
formance. The  play  was,  in  his  hands,  one 
of  the  greatest  successes  in  all  the  annals  of 
stage  history;  but  Jefferson  is  dead  now,  and 
the  play  lies  on  the  shelf  a  lifeless,  worthless 
thing.  It  has  no  value  as  literature  and  is 
quite  dead  as  a  play,  requiring  the  genius  of 
a  second  Jefferson  to  give  it  life. 

Nobody  would  dream  of  calling  The  Music 
Master  a  great  play;  it  is  old-fashioned  and 
mechanical  and  false  in  many  ways.  But,  us- 
ing it  as  a  model,  David  Warfield  created  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  stage  portraits  of  con- 
temporary times.  He  was  able  to  breathe 
life  into  the  dead  words  of  the  play.  I  do 
not  think  it  can  justly  be  said  that  the  art 
of  David  Warfield  was  inferior  to  that  of 
Charles  Klein!  Here,  then,  are  two  great 
successes  which,  as  plays,  are  worthless.     I 


THE  ART  OF  ACTING  261 

am  not  sure,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  either 
play  has  ever  been  published  in  standard 
form.  Surely  it  is  clear  that  the  actors,  in 
these  two  notable  instances,  supplied  their 
share  of  creative  force. 

There  are  hack  actors,  it  is  true,  just  as 
there  are  hack  authors,  and  hack  painters. 
But  it  is  no  more  possible  to  place  the  art 
of  the  writer  above  that  of  the  actor,  than  it 
is  to  place  the  art  of  the  poet  above  that  of 
the  painter.  They  are  all  creative  arts; 
though  they  may,  on  occasion,  minister  to 
each  other.  If  the  poet  chooses  to  take  a 
painter's  picture  and  put  on  paper  what  the 
painter  has  expressed  on  canvas,  is  the  poet's 
work  any  the  less  dignified,  any  the  less 
creative  because  he  has  taken  the  painter's 
subject?  Aren't  the  word  pictures  he  paints 
fully  as  individual  as  the  oil  pictures  of  the 
painter?  Doesn't  the  creation  of  such  a  poem 
depend  upon  the  same  faculties  as  the  crea- 
tion of  any  of  his  other  poems  ?  When  Abbey 
painted  his  gorgeous  picture  of  Tennyson's 
"Search  for  the  Holy  Grail"  for  the  Bos- 


262  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

ton  Public  Library,  did  he  lessen  the  value 
of  his  work  because  he  put  on  canvas  what 
Tennyson  had  put  on  paper?  When  the 
actor  with  his  art  expresses  on  the  stage  what 
the  author  has  expressed  on  paper,  he  stands 
in  exactly  the  same  relation  to  his  author  as 
Abbey  does  to  Tennyson.  He  is  not  imi- 
tating any  more  than  Abbey  was  imitating. 
/He  is  merely  accomplishing  his  artistic  re- 
Isults  by  means  of  a» different  medium. 

The  case  is  even  stronger  for  the  actor, 
because  a  play  does  not  exist  as  a  play  until 
it  is  performed  on  the  stage.  It  may  have 
artistic  value  as  a  piece  of  literature,  but 
until  it  lives  and  breathes  on  the  stage  it  is 
not  a  play.  A  play — if  it  is  really  a  play, 
and  not  a  story  in  the  form  of  dialogue — is 
constructed  according  to  the  peculiar  require- 
ments and  conditions  of  the  theater.  It  de- 
pends for  its  effectiveness  upon  the  emphasis 
which  only  the  theater  can  give.  In  reading  a 
play  we  can  only  imagine  what  it  will  be  like, 
in  manuscript  it  is  not  a  complete  thing.  And 
a  great  many  plays  must  be  performed  on  the 


THE  ART  OF  ACTING  263 

stage  before  we  can  judge  their  value.  Even 
the  most  experienced  managers  and  play- 
readers  insist  that  you  never  can  tell,  you 
never  can  be  sure  of  the  success  of  any  play. 
This  certainly  means  that  the  actor  has  his 
important  share  in  the  creation  of  the  play. 
To  say  that  his  work  is  imitative  is  absurd. 

Rostand  wrote  Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  and 
declared  to  the  world  that  Coquehn  was  the 
perfect  embodiment  of  his  creation.  If  we 
accept  the  view  that  acting  is  merely  a  supine 
imitation  of  the  author's  work,  surely  any 
actor  who  wished  to  play  Cyrano,  in  order 
to  give  the  best  performance  of  the  author's 
conception,  would  imitate  Coquelin.  Anyone 
knows  that  such  a  course  would  mean  failure. 
The  actor  who  plays  Cyrano  today  does  not 
bother  his  head  about  Coquelin's  method,  he 
creates  his  own  Cyrano;  he  expresses  his  own 
conception — just  as  Rostand  himself  did  in 
the  beginning. 

And  let  Rostand  select  six  great  actors  who 
could  play  Cyrano,  and  let  him  talk  to  them 
imtil  he  was  black  in  the  face  explaining  to 


264  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  ACTOR 

the  minutest  detail  just  how  the  part  should 
be  played.  Then  let  the  six  actors  separate 
and  work  out  their  character  individually. 
What  would  be  the  result?  There  would  be 
six  different  Cyranos,  of  course!  There 
would  be  just  as  much  difference  in  them 
as  there  was  in  the  Hamlets  of  Booth,  Irving, 
Fechter,  and  Mounet-Sully!  The  reason  for 
this  is  not  far  to  seek.  Each  actor  must 
^create  his  characters  according  to  his  abilities. 

This  great  play  of  Rostand's,  as  a  play,  is 
quite  useless  until  some  qualified  actor  takes 
it  from  its  library  shelf  and,  by  his  creative 
power,  gives  it  a  new  birth,  a  new  lease  of 
life  as  a  play.  It  would  have  a  very  short 
stage-life  if  a  poor  actor  attempted  it.  The 
same  is  true  of  Hamlet.  If  Hamlet  should 
be  produced  in  New  York  today  with  an  ordi- 
nary actor  in  the  part,  it  would  be  pretty 
promptly  withdrawn,  for  it  is  only  great  act- 
ing that  will  induce  the  public  to  see  again  aj 
play  they  know  so  well. 

And  again  if  a  well-known  actor  were  se- 
cured to  play  Hamlet,  and  told  that  he  should 


t 


41^ 
THE  ART  OF  ACTING  265 

give  a  laithful  copy  of  Booth's  Hamlet,  or 
living's  or  anybody  else's  but  his  own,  it  is 
easy  to  imagine  what  the  result  would  be. 
Every  actor  must  express  his  own  conceptioril 
of  any  character,  and  must  express  it  in  his  j 
own  way ;  out  of  the  imagination  of  the  actor  j 
must  grow  the  image  that  is  to  appeal  to  our ' 
imagination.  "^ 

Acting  in  its  true  sense  is  as  boundless  in 
its  scope,  as  unfettered,  as  "  creative "  as 
any  of  the  other  fine  arts.  I  believe  that  the 
art  of  Modjeska  and  Ristori,  and  Booth  and 
Irving  cannot  fairly  be  judged  by  a  lower 
aesthetic  standard  than  the  art  of  Whistler 
or  the  art  of  Beethoven  or  the  art  of  Goethe 
or  the  art  of  Rodin.  I  sincerely  hope  that 
this  little  book  has  shown  that  the  art  of  the 
actor  calls  into  play  the  same  imaginative 
and  creative  faculties  as  the  art  of  the  painter 
or  the  composer  or  the  poet  or  the  sculptor, 
and  that  the  beginner  in  the  profession  should 
guide  and  judge  his  work  by  ideals  as  lofty 
and  exacting  as  theirs. 


INDEX 


Abbey,  E.  A.,  261-262 

Accessories,  stage,  176-212 

Acting,  art  and  craft,  3-4;  art 
and  science,  171;  change  of 
method,  244-247;  defense  of 
the  art,  257-265;  literature 
lacking,  246-247.  See  also 
Art  of  acting 

Actor,  inability  to  write,  xix- 
XX;  not  a  mechanic,  240 

Adrienne  Lecoiivrieiir,  35 

After-swell,  149-150 

Aldwych  Theater,  xxv 

Alexander,  George,  233 

Amasis,  xxiv 

Amateur  and  professional, 
168-175 

Andrews,  Kenneth,  x-xi 

Androcles  and  the  Lion,   130 

Anthony,  John,  xxi 

Antonio,  68,  69,  70,  71 

Antony,  Mark,  39,  149 

Applause,  151,  250 

Aptitudes,  9 

Arabian  Nights  tale,  227 

Archer,  William,  xvii 

Aristotle,  xvii 

Arms,  89,  93 

Art,  concealing,  46,  159,  175 

Art  of  acting,  v,  xviii,  3-4; 
history,  246 ;  principles, 
xxvi;  teaching  and  writing, 
xxix-xx;  unchanging,  245- 
247.  /8'ee  also  Acting;  Craft 
of  acting;  Technique 

Artifice,  125 

Artistic  sense,  79 

As  You  Like  It,  35 

267 


Asche,  Oscar,  226-229 

Assurance,  144,  167 

Atmosphere  of  a  play,  76,  225- 
242;  costumes  and,  215-217 

Audience,  being  oblivious  to, 
150-151;  giving  them  a 
rest,  118-119;  evidence  as 
to  "tone"  of  play,  226- 
229;  making  them  laugh, 
152-160;  managing,  152; 
quickness  with  the  eye,  94, 
208;  response,  250;  sensing, 
153;  starting  with,  142-143, 
145 

Australia,  xxii-xxiii 

Bagstock,  Major,  xxi 

Bargain,  The,  xxii 

Barker,   Granville,  xxiv,   180, 

182,  210 
Becket,  81 
Beethoven,  265 
Beginners,    predicting    future 

prospects,   161-167 
Beginning,  possibilities,  21 
Belasco,  237 
Belch,  Sir  Toby,  xxi 
Bennett,  Arnold,  101 
Bertuccio,    149 
Billaud-Varennes,  xxiii 
Biographies,  248 
Block,  Kalph,  170 
Blot    on    the    'Scutcheon,    A, 

xxiii 
Books,  vii 
Booth,  Edwin,  vii,  6,  130,  149, 

243,  248,  264,  265 
Boston,  221 


268 


INDEX 


Boston  Public   Library,   261- 

262 
Braid,  James,  135 
Brazenose  Club,  165 
Breath,  52,  55 
Bridge,  190 

Britomart,  Lady,  105-107 
Broadbent,  John,  xxiv 
Broadway,     staying    on,     26- 

30 
Browning,  Robert,  xxiii 
Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings,  173 
Burbage,  Richard,  248 
Byron,  Lord,  222 

Caesar,  39,   149 

Caesar's  servant,  39-40 

Called  Back,  124 

Calvert,  Louis,  autobiographi- 
cal, v-xi;  biographical,  xx- 
xxvii;    parts    played,    xxi- 

XXV 

Calvert,    Mrs.    Charles,    xxii, 

166,  221 
Captain  Drew  on  Leave,  xxiv, 

229-230 
Caricatures,  163 
Casca,  xxiii 
Castlemaine,  Lady,  98 
Ceiling,  203-204 
Celebrated  Case,  A,  24 
Century  Theater,  New  York, 

xxii 
Chairs  and  tables,  196-198 
Character,    getting    into,    61- 

78;   knowledge  of,  91,  112, 

129 
Clavigo,  xxiii 
Cleverness,  256 
Climax,  141 
Cohan,  George  M.,  xx 
Cohan  Theater  in  New  York, 

243 
Cold  in  the  head,  50 
Colleen  Baivn,  35 
Comedy,  audience  in,  152-160 
Comedy  Theater,  London,  xxiv 


Company,  producer  and  mem- 
bers, 238-241 

Competition,  20 

Concealment  of  art,  46,  159, 
175 

Concentration,  72-75,  113 

Concert,  The,  237 

Concerted  effort,  101 

Constance,  136 

Control,  134-135,  137,  153 

Conventionality   in  plays,   29 

Conventions,  88 

Conversation,  115,  116 

Co-operation  of  managers  and 
stage  specialists,  192,  193- 
195 

Coquelin,  263-264;  use  of  eyes 
in  Cyrano,  85-87,   131,   132 

Coriolanus,  234 

Costume  designers,  193,  215 

Costumes,  function,  215-217 

Cottage  in  the  Air,  The,  xxi 

Condell,  Henry,  248 

Cough,  94 

Court  Theater,  London,  xxiv 

Craft  of  acting,  3-4,  95,  105, 
172-173.  See  also  Tech- 
nique 

Craig,  Gordon,  252-256 

Crawley,  Sir  Pitt,  xxi 

Creative  art,  257-259 

Crescendo,    138-149,    152,    160 

Critics,  xviii 

Cruikshank,  163 

Cues,  64 

Cushman,  Charlotte,  7,  249 

Cusius,  155. 

Cymheline,  139 

Cynicism,  13 

Cyrano,  263-264 

Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  xxiv,  85, 
131,  132,  263 

Dancing  Oirl,  The,  xxv,  250 
David  Garrick,  xxi 
Dewhurst,  John,  xxiii 
Difficulties,  v.  19 


INDEX 


269 


Dilettantism,  253 
Distinctness  of  speech,  56 
"Dog-towns,"  199-200 
Doing  nothing,  art  of,  87,  96- 

120 
Domhey  and  Son,  xxi 
Don,  xxi 

Douglas,  Richard,  184-187 
Dramatic  critics,  xviii 
Dress  rehearsal,  197,   199-200 
Drudgery,  60;  see  also  Work 
Drury  Lane  Theater,  xxiii,  39 
Dublin,  249 
Dull  moments,  119-120 
Durban,  xxii 

Ear  for  music,  17 

Earnestness,  7-8 

Elementary  lessons,  80 

Elocution,  vi,  46,  47 

Emotions,  121-151 ;  cumula- 
tive, 140-141,  147,  148;  defi- 
nition, 121-122;  expressing 
mimicry,  22;  eyes  for  con- 
veying, 80-81,  82-83;  feel- 
ing, 123,  150;  feeling  and 
simulating,  132;  prepara- 
tion for,  138,  139-140;  re- 
strained and  expressed,  252 ; 
unadorned,  the  basis  of  all, 
128-129 

Empress  of  Ireland  (ship), 
164 

Enemy  of  the  People,  An, 
xxiii,  XXV 

English  language,  47 

Entering  the  profession,  19- 
42 

Enthusiasm,  11 

Enunciation,  56 

Experiences,  vi,  viii 

Exposition  of  play,  routine, 
102,  104 

Expression,  122 

Eyes,  rule,  83;  use,  79-87 

Face  of  actor,  200,  202 


Failures  of  actors,  8-9 
Failures     of     plays,     partial 

cause,      195-198;      primary 

things,  241-242 
Falstaff,  xxi,  xxv,  38 
Fame,  5 
Faust,  230-231 
Faucit,  Helen,  139,  214 
Fechter,  264 
Fencing,  115 
Finesse,   124 
Flexibility  of  voice,  52 
Flowers,    real    and    painted, 

183-184 
Fool's  Revenge,  A,  149 
Forbes-Robertson,  23,  48,  234 
Frances,  Madam,  215 
"Freeze,"  51 
French  school,  132,  133 
Fundamentals,  95 
Furniture,  stage,  187-188,  196- 

198 
"Futures,"    161-167 
Futurism,  252 

Galsworthy,  John,  179 
Garden  scene,  182-184 
George,  Grace,  xxii,  33 
Germans,  214 
Gestures,  87-95 
Ghost  in  Hamlet,  51 
Gilbert,  Sir  William,  219 
Glance,  value  of,  81-84 
Globe  Theater,  London,  xxiv 
Goethe,  xxiii,  265 
Goff,  135-136 
Grand  Duke,  xxi 
Grocery  store,  177-178 
Gwynne,  Nell,  98 

Hamilton,  Clayton,  xxvii 
Hamlet,  167,  264 
Hamlet,  35,  264 
Handkerchief,  94 
Hands,  use  of,  87-95 
Handsomeness,   18 
Harrison,  Frederic,  xxiv 


270 


INDEX 


Hawtrey,  Charles,  101 

Hay  fever,  50 

Haymarket  Theater,  xxiv 

Hemming,  John,  248 

Henry  V,  xxv 

Her  Majesty's  Theater,  Lon- 
don, xxiii 

Heroic  parts,  93 

Hindle  Wakes,  89 

His  Majesty's  Theater,  Lon- 
don, xxi,  xxv 

Horniman,  Miss,  89 

Humanity,  12-16 

Humor,  16,  159,  227-228 

Ibsen,  xxiii 

Illusion,  scenery,  178,  180, 
182,   189 

Imagination,  16,  220 

Imitation,  258-259 

Imogene,  139 

Impersonation,  essence  of,  65 

Individuality,  ix 

Ingot,  Simon,  xxi 

Inn  with  the  purple  walls,  191 

Insincerity,  13,  131 

Interior  scenes,  203-206 

Iron  works,  179-180 

Irving,  Sir  Henry,  xxiii,  58, 
130,  243,  248,  264,  265; 
Manchester  experience,  164- 
166;  orchestra  leader  and, 
222;  use  of  eyes,  81-84 

Irving,  Lawrence,  162-164 

Irving,  Washington,  259 

Ives,  David,  xxv,  250 

Jealousy,  146 

Jefferson,    Joseph,    109,    134, 

135,  249;  Rip  Van  Winkle, 

259-260 
Jenkin,  Fleeming,  xix 
Jim  the  Penman,  125 
Jokes,  one's  own,  159 
John     Bull's     Other     Island, 

xxiv,  158 
Jones,  Henry  Arthur,  237 


Julius  Caesar,  xxiii,  38-40 
Jungle  scenes,  180-181,  182 
Jiittner,  Dr.,  xxi 

Kean,  Charles,  243;  voice,  50 

Kemp,  William,  248 

Key.    See  "Tone." 

King  Henry  IV,   xxv 

King  John,   136 

Kismet,  226-229 

Klein,  Charles,  260 

Lady  of  Lyons,  The,  35 
Lauder,  Harry,  voice,  48,  59 
Langtry,  Mrs.,  xxiii 
Laughter,  57,  231;  killing  an 

audience's,  157;  making  an 

audience     laugh,     152-160; 

sensitiveness  to  audience's, 

154-155;  too  much,  158 
Laws  of  acting,  ix 
Laws  of  play-making,  xvii 
Lear,  234 

Lewis,  George  Henry,  xix 
Lighting  effects,  190,  200-203, 

205;   natural,  209-210;   too 

ingenious,  206-209 
Listening,  art  of,  96,  105,  108, 

110,  111,  113,  117,  118 
Literature,  vi,  vii,  246-247 
Little  things,  119-120 
London  Assurance,  35 
Lorance,  Pierre,  24 
Low  tones,  54-55 
Lung  power,  53,  138 
Lyceum      Theater,      London, 

xxiii,  230 
Lyric  Theater,  xxv 

Macari,  124,  125 
Macbeth,  124,  234 
Macbeth,  35,  255 
Macbeth's  castle,  253-254 
Machinery,     elaborate     stage, 

186,  187 
Macready,  51 
Major  Barha/ra,  xxiv,  105,  155, 

156 


INDEX 


271 


I       Malvolio,  45 

Manchester,  England,  xxii, 
89;  Irving  in,  164-166 

MancBUvers  of  Jane,  The,  237 

Mansfield,  Richard,  xx 

Mantell,  Robert,  33 

Margate,  xxiii 

Marie  Antoinette,  133 

Marseillaise,  221 

Masquerader,  The,  64 

Measure  for  Measure,  35 

Mechanics,  59,  60,  79,  80 

Melbourne,  xxiii 

Melnotte,  Claude,  100 

Menas,  37 

Merchant  of  Venice,  66-75 

Mercutio,  xxi 

Mermaids  and  sea-shells,  187 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  The, 
xxi 

Metallic  tone,  53 

Method,  change  in,  244-247; 
lack,  in  producers  and  man- 
agers, 198 

Micawber,  xxi 

Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream,  A, 
210 

Miller,  Henry,  xx 

Miming,   112 

Modjeska,  Madame,  140,  235- 
236,  243,  249,  265 

MoflFat  Company,  173 

Moments,  41 

Money,  35 

Moonlight,  210-211 

Mortimer,  James,  xxi,  xxv 

Mortimer,  Tad,  232-234 

Motives,  3 

Movement,  94,  111 

Much  Ado  Ahout  Nothing,  35 

"Murder,"  51 

Music,  costumes  and,  213- 
224;  function,  217-222;  Irv- 
ing and,  222-224 

Music  Master,  The,  110,  232, 
260 

Musketeers,  The,  xxiii 


Natal,  xxii 
Natural  speech,  43-60 
Naturalness,  171-175 
Neighborhood  Playhouse,   169 
Nervousness,  143-145,  197 
New  Theater,  London,  xxiv 
New  Theater,  New  York,  xxi, 

xxv 
New  York  Company,  26-30 
New  York  try-outs  in  small 

towns,  199-200 
Nottingham,  24 

Oak  chamber,  203 

Observation,  31 

Odette,  140 

Old  Heidelberg,  xxi 

Old-fashioned  play,  250 

Old  school  methods,  46,  47, 
59,  250,  251 

On  Actors  and  the  Art  of  Act- 
ing, xix 

One-part  actors,  27-30 

Ophelia,   131 

Orange,  127 

Orchestra  leader,  222 

Othello,  124,  138,  234;  re- 
quirements of  the  part,  145- 
148 

Othello,  35,  148 

Outdoor  scenes,  201 

Paid  in  Full,  xxv 

Parrotting,  22-24,  66,  117 

Part,  enjoying  one's  own, 
159;  exact  words,  109;  get- 
ting inside  of  one's,  61-78, 
118;  variations  of  perform- 
ance, 108 

Passing  of  the  Third  Floor 
Back,  The,  23 

Passions,  portraying,  133-135 

Personal  appearance,   17-18 

Personality,   10 

Phelps,  Samuel,  45 

Pinero,  Sir  A.  W.,  103,  232- 
234 


272 


INDEX 


Pistol   (part),  xxv 

Plays,  atmosphere,  76;  com- 
posite, 256 ;  notion  of  whole, 
63;  cause  of  failure,  195- 
198;  single  appeal,  225 

Players'  Club,  247 

Playhouse,  The,  New  York, 
xxii 

Playhouse  Company,  33 

Playing-up,  101 

Play-making,  xvii 

Point,  thrust,  and  lunge,  115 

Porthos,  xxiii 

Portia,  37 

Possibilities,  21 

Post-impressionism,  252 

Prejudices  about  actors,  162- 
166,  257 

Primaries,  x,  241-242 

Producers'  work,  faults,  190, 
192,  193;  scenery  and  ac- 
cessories, 176-212 

Production,  coherency  needed, 
213-215 

Professionalism,  168-175 

Proof,  24 

Prospero,  xxii 

Pull,  21 

Purple  walls,  191 

Purpose  of  the  writer,  ix 

Qualifications,  3-18 

Eachel,  132;  Marseillaise,  221 

Rage,    133,   148,   149,   232-234 

Range  of  voice,  51-52 

Realism,  46;  scenery  and 
lighting,  176-212;  subtler 
effects,  212 

Realizing  a  part,  73 

Redfern,  215 

Repertoire  company,  advan- 
tages in  beginning  with,  32- 
42 

Repetition,  dangers,  23-26, 
113,  117 

Replies,  114,  117;  timing, 
154-155 


Repose,  94 

Reserve  power,  85 

Restraint,  148,  252 

Richard  III,  35,  50 

Rip  Van  Winkle,  109,  259 

Ristori,  6,  23,  136,  249,  265; 

quoted   on   conditions,    132, 

133 
Road  company,  22-26 
Robespierre,  xxiv 
Rodin,  265 
Romeo    and   Juliet,    xxi,    35, 

235-236 
Rosmersholm,  xxiii 
Rostand,  263-264 
Routine  exposition,  102,  104 
Royalty  Theater,  xxv 
Run  of  Luck,  A,  xxiii 
Russia,  252 

St.  James's  Theater,  London, 
xxiv,  103 

St.  John,  Holt,  xxv 

Salvation  Army,  156 

Salvini,  243 

Savoy  Theater,  London,  xxi 

Saxe-Meiningen  Company,  39 

Scenery,  astounding,  Broad- 
way, 189-192;  baffling,  180- 
181;  crudity,  181;  outdoor 
set,  201;  realistic,  effect, 
176-212 

Scenic  artist,  177,  189,  193, 
201 

School  for  Scandal,  The,  xxi 

Scotch  play,   173-174 

Sea-shells  and  merimaids, 
187 

Self-consciousness,   172 

Self-examination,  8 

Selfishness,  98,  119 

Self-possession,  133 

Sensitiveness,  143 

Servant,  part  of,  62-63 

Shadows,  209 

Shakespeare,  xxii,  xxiii,  66, 
70,  71,  247-248,  254-255 


INDEX 


273 


Shakespearian    parts,     92-93, 

126-129,  139 
Shakespearian      plays,      234- 

236;  Broadway,  astounding 

scenery,  189-192 
Shaw,  Bernard,  105,  155,  158, 

180;  wit  of  plays,  158 
Ship  in  distress,  185-187 
Shouting,  52 
Shylock,    124,    130;    study  of 

the  character,  66-75 
Silent  work,  104,  110,  111 
Simplicity,  x,  173-175 
Simplifying,  75-76 
Sixty -eight      Years     on     the 

Stage,  xxii,  166,  221 
Sky,  201,  202 
Sloping  platform,   190 
Small  parts,  40-41 
Smith,  Sidney,   191 
Soliloquy,  68 
Sonorous  tone,  53 
Sorcerer,  The,  219 
Sothern,  the  elder,  243 
South  Africa,  xxii 
Speaking  naturally,  43-60 
Specialists,  co-operation,   192, 

193-195 
Spontaneity,  170-175 
Stage  carpenter,  194-195 
Stage-projection,   xx 
Stage  setting.    See  Scenery. 
Standards,  vi,  246 
Stars,  38,  240 
Stevenson,  R.  L,,  xix 
Stock  company,  advantages  in 

beginning  with,  30-32 
Stockmann,  Peter,  xxv 
Strife,  xxi,   179 
Success,  6-7,  168 
Suggestion    in    scenery,    178, 

181,  182 
Sullivan,     Sir    Arthur,     218- 

219 
Sullivan,  Barry,  166-168 
Sully,  Mounet,  264 
Sunday,  xxiv 


Sunlight,  205 

Supers,  230-231 

Svengali,   125 

Sweet  Kitty  Bellairs,  xxiv 

Sweet    Nell    of    Old    Drury, 

xxiv,  98 
Sympathy,  12 

Tables  and  chairs,  196-198 

Taste,  59 

Teaching   the   art   of   acting, 

XX 

Team  work,  36,  97-102,  241- 

242 
Tearle,  Osmond,  xxiii,  35 
Tears,  135 

Teazle,  Sir  Peter,  xxi 
Technique,  viii,  ix,  10,  15,  49, 

55,  60,  79,  80,  85,  112,  114, 

116,  123,  147,  168,  252 
Temperament,  16 
Tempest,  The,  xxii 
Tennyson,  261-262 
Terry,  Ellen,  56-57,  135 
Terry,  Fred,  xxi 
Thinking,  74,  91,  95 
Thompsett,  Alfred,  xxi 
Thome,  Sarah,  xxiii 
Thunderbolt,    The,    xxi,    xxv, 

103,  232-234 
"Tone"    of    a    performance, 

225-242 
Tones,  50-51 
Towzer,  xxiv 
Traditions,  vi,  243-256 
Transitional  stage,  172 
Tree,  Sir  Herbert,  xxiii,  251; 

trickeries,   123-131 
Tricks,   123-131 
Trilhy,  125 
Truisms,  95 
Truth,  X 
Try-outs,  199-200 
Turning  points,  168-175 
Ticelfth  Night,  xxi 
Type  actors,  27-30 
Typhoon,  The,  163 


274 


INDEX 


Undershaft,  Andrew,  xxiv,  156 

Vanity  Fair,  xxi 
Variations     of     performance, 

108 
Vaudeville,  48 
Vedrenne,  xxiv 
Villiers,  Colonel,  xxiv 
Voice,  16-17;   cultivation,  43- 

60;  first  place  in  the  play, 

224 

Waiter  (part),  xxiv 
"Walking  on"  parts,  26 
Wallack's  Theater,  35 
Waller,  Lewis,  234 
Wallis,  Miss,  xxiii,  34 
Warfield,      David,       109-110, 

232,  260-261 
Washington   Square   Players, 

33 


Weeping,  135 

Wenman,  58 

Werner,  222 

What  the  Public  Wants,  xxv, 
101 

Whistler,  265 

Wilkins  Micawher,  xxi 

Williams,  Captain,  xxv 

Wisconsin  Players,  169-170 

Wolsey,  45,  124,  127,  129 

Word,'8,  exactly  as  written, 
109;  learning  before  study- 
ing character,  62,  65;  su- 
premacy, 219-221 

Work,  20,  50,  162 

Writing,  xix-xx 

Wyndham,  Sir  Charles,  xxiv, 
109,   132,  157 

Wyndham's  Theater,  xxiv 

You  Never  Can  Tell,  xxiv 


14  DAY  USE 

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MAR     1 1965  7  6 


IREC'D  L.D 


DEC  01 1987 


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